Cosi fan tutte

The course of true love doesn't run smooth when Mozart and Da Ponte call the shots. Cosi fan tutte - 'That's how all women behave' - is the last of the three operas written by this great musical and dramatic pairing and is revived by The Royal Opera for the Olympic Programme in the classic production by Jonathan Miller, under the baton of the great Mozartian Colin Davis, and for the final performance The Royal Opera's David Syrus. While the staging is contemporary, the fascinations and frailties of human nature dissected in the opera are timeless and reveal exquisitely uncomfortable truths as two men follow the promptings of an arch-manipulator to test the constancy of their lovers. The cast is a welcome one of familiar names to the production alongside new ones to perform a score of great beauty and subtlety. The serenely poignant trio 'Soave sia il vento', the contrasting bravura 'Come scoglio' and the mesmerizing Act I finale are just three of the many famous highlights of Mozart's music and its wide-ranging evocations of the pleasure and the pain of emotional entanglements.