Programme 12/5 — 4/6

Tickets for performances at the National Theatre are available at the relevant box offices.

The opera Cosi fan tutte is another continuation of the Mozart “series” at the Estates Theatre. Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto, replete with irony and extremely unflattering to (not only) women, was originally supposed to be set to music by Antonio Salieri, who renounced his intention in the very beginning. Mozart, however, amid Ponte’s extremely chamber-like, even intimate, story came into his element. Using a mere six characters, at the turn of 1790 he created a work so inspired musically that it was to become one of the apices of his oeuvre. The opera Cosi fan tutte (or Thus Do They All), with the subheading The School for Lovers, is a black comedy exploring human flightiness, defencelessness against one’s own emotions and the nature of love, which – fidelity or infidelity – is actually always absolutely “sincere“. The Slovak-Czech director Martin Čičvák has already staged several productions whose very theme is the “curse of love”; these include Le nozze di Figaro after Beaumarchais, Mozart and Turrini, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail.