Dramma giocoso in two acts K. 588 (1790)
Lib­retto: Lorenzo Da Ponte

Wo­men are like that, wo­men act that way – no mat­ter how you trans­late the words "Così fan tutte", it boils down to this: wo­men are im­possible to un­der­stand! The philo­soph­er Don Alf­onso, however, be­lieves he knows how to read wo­men’s hearts and is ready to test his the­ory in a little ex­per­i­ment of love. When Ursel and Karl-Ernst Her­rmann’s pro­duc­tion of "Così" be­gins, we find Don Alf­onso play­ing with fire. First it’s only a ci­gar­ette, but then it’s the flames of love that he’s stok­ing. And the in­stru­ment he’s us­ing is an­cient, well-worn and very ef­fect­ive: jeal­ousy.

In their light-footed, witty and po­et­ic sta­ging, the Her­rmanns took ad­vant­age of the wide stage of the Großes Fest­spiel­haus to cre­ate a lu­min­ous and el­eg­antly min­im­al­ist land­scape dot­ted with a few spar­ing but styl­ish props. The lov­ers are por­trayed with verve and com­pel­ling emo­tion­al con­fu­sion, Guglielmo and Fer­rando as the cocky sol­diers learn that ly­ing isn’t the best way to find out the truth.

Ana María Martínez, Fiordi­ligi
Soph­ie Koch, Do­ra­bella
Stéphane De­gout, Guglielmo
Shawn Math­ey, Fer­rando
Helen Donath, Despina
Sir Thomas Al­len, Don Alf­onso

Wien­er Phil­har­monik­er
Konzer­tver­ein­i­gung Wien­er Staat­so­per­n­chor

Mi­chael Ho­neck, con­duct­or
Ursel and Karl-Ernst Her­rmann, stage dir­ect­ors
Thomas Grimm, video dir­ect­or

Re­cord­ing dates: 31.07.| 12.08.| 16.08.2006
Ven­ue: Großes Fest­spiel­haus