Notice is hereby givan that due to bad weather the concert will be held in Cormons municipal theatre at 8.30 p.m.

Guglielmo:

My dear ladies, you fool so many,
That, if I must tell the truth,
If your lovers complain,
I begin to sympathize with them.
I’ve always had a fondness for women,
You know it, everyone does:
Every day I show it,
I give signs of my affection;
But that tricking so many and so many
Honestly, it disheartens me.
A thousand times I took up my sword
To defend your honor,
A thousand times I protected you
With my words—and even more with my heart.
But that tricking so many and so many
Is a tiresome little vice.

The last of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s librettos, after Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787), Così fan tutte (or La Scuola degli amanti) is also Mozart’s last opera buffa: it was followed by the Singspiel Die Zauberflöte and the opera seria La clemenza di Tito.

Written between October 1789 and January 1790, it was performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on the evening of January 26, 1790: it was moderately successful with the public and received excellent reviews from the press. However, after the fourth performance, the death in February of Emperor Joseph II, the opera’s patron, and the subsequent closure of the Viennese theaters due to mourning led to the postponement of the show until the following summer.

An interesting fact about the opera also introduces Mozart’s antagonist in Vienna, the court composer Antonio Salieri, to whom Da Ponte seems to have first offered the libretto, as appears in some documents attesting to a draft of the opening arias written in his own hand. When and why Salieri gave up the opera is unclear, but the fact is that Mozart, despite the period of serious financial worries he was going through, produced a brilliant and entertaining score, full of pure musical ingenuity.

The story of the libretto seems original, but a dense web of references points to Ovid, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Marivaux, and Goldoni. At stake is female virtue, in exchange for which is offered a disenchanted willingness to seize the opportunities for love that life offers without sentimental hesitation or moral scruples, as theorized by the cunning maid Despina in her lesson in ars amandi to the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. In fact, deceived by their lovers, who present themselves as new suitors in disguise, they finally give in to flattery, unknowingly swapping partners.

This extraordinary literary and musical plot, which, like all great ‘classics’, speaks to all ages with equal emotional force, is presented by the Festival in a new guise, shifting the setting to 1968, a pivotal year in a true cultural, sexual, and social revolution. So we can imagine Fiordiligi and Dorabella no longer as two bourgeois girls of the 18th century, but as students involved in the feminist movement. Their lovers Guglielmo and Ferrando are young idealists, hippies or militants, ready to test not only love, but also the moral values of their companions. Don Alfonso, the ‘old philosopher’ who plots the story, becomes a disillusioned intellectual, perhaps a former revolutionary from the 1950s, while Despina could be an emancipated and non-conformist woman, a true child of 1968.

The set design follows suit: no more Italian gardens or aristocratic salons, but a ‘hippie commune’ among trees and fires, with signs displaying ideas and the scent of incense.

Now, therefore, the challenge becomes more ambitious: can loyalty exist in a changing world? Can we still believe in romantic love, or is it all just a game of roles and illusions?