Così Fan Tutte - Sacramento Opera

Left: Intermission, Tuesday night


Went to the Sacramento Community Center Tuesday night and saw "Così Fan Tutte."

What a wonderful show! Great voices! Cute, and silly and risqué.

According to Wikipedia:

Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti, K. 588, is a dramma giocoso by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was written by Lorenzo da Ponte.

Written and composed at the suggestion of the Emperor Joseph II, the libretto was originally intended to be set to music by Mozart's colleague Antonio Salieri who completed only parts of the first act and then broke off his work. The first performance of Mozart's setting took place at the Burgtheater in Vienna on January 26, 1790.

Mozart and Da Ponte took as a theme "fiancée swapping" which dates back to the 13th century, with notable earlier versions being those of Boccaccio's Decameron and Shakespeare's play Cymbeline. It also incorporates elements of the myth of Procris as found in Ovid.

The plot did not offend Viennese sensibilities of the time, but throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries it was considered risqué. The opera was rarely performed, and when it did appear it was presented in one of several bowdlerized libretto. After World War II, it regained its place in the standard operatic repertoire.

There are many recordings of Così fan tutte, and it is frequently performed, being the fifteenth most performed opera in North America according to Opera America. The play Così, written by playwright Louis Nowra, features mental patients acting this opera. Many extracts from the opera were used as incidental music in the 2004 movie Closer.

The title literally means "Thus do all (women)" but is often translated as "Women are like that". The words are sung by the three men in Act II, Scene xi, just before the finale. Moreover, da Ponte used the line "Così fan tutte le belle" (thus do all beautiful women) in an earlier opera with Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro (in Act I, Scene vii).

Jennifer Lin and Tom Osborn, Ambassadors for Sacramento Opera, ambassadize away at intermission. At left edge of photo, Sacramento Opera Executive Director Rod Gideons.

Jennifer says that of the three shows this season, "Così Fan Tutte" has the smallest cast. The other shows, "Aida," and "Carmen," are much larger.

Jerry Frink, with the most innovative fashion statement of the night. Why did Jerry decide to attend the Opera (by the way, the best-dressed crowd I've seen in Sacramento) in a pink boa?

Jerry is a frequent protestor against the Iraq War, whether daily at the 16th and J street corner, or on Broadway, or elsewhere in the downtown Sacramento area. He was infuriated, and politicized, by the Bush Administration's efforts to place a gay marriage ban in the Constitution. Hence, the pink boa: the personal becomes political. Jerry goes everywhere with the pink boa these days.

Jerry opined that America was becoming something of a fascist state, susceptible to Orwellian double-speak, and that people must protest that trend, as was done to greater effect during the Vietnam War. I started expounding my theory that the so-called "War on Terror" was even better suited to totalitarian purposes than the three empires Orwell foresaw when he wrote "1984" in 1948 (I've discussed some these things here), since maintaining static empires is a big drain on resources, whereas the "War on Terror" is much easier to maintain - a pocket kind of war.

I began excitedly getting into the politics, but then I noticed Jerry was beginning to politely edge away from me, as if maybe I was just a wee bit too rabid for his taste. *sigh*

I need to get a boa - maybe a rainbow boa, since Jerry has cornered pink in Sacramento.