Mozart: Così fan tutte Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.5

Mozart: Così fan tutte Blu-ray Movie Review

Mozart's deviously controversial 'buffa' gets a sparkling production by the Zurich Opera House.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 25, 2010

Can farce distract an audience enough from some uncomfortable subject matters? Is that in fact one of the functions of farce—to dance around discomfiting truths and make us laugh even as our subconscious is perhaps having its own sort of “aha!” moment. Cosi fan tutte has long been one of Mozart’s most controversial pieces, as I discussed in some detail in my review of the Glyndebourne production which was released on Blu-ray last year. Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo da Ponte crafted a surprisingly scabrous, perhaps misogynistic piece which Mozart filled with his typically effervescent music. Perhaps that in an of itself could be seen as a farcical attempt to decorate a story about the vagaries of womankind so that no one would notice, at least right off the bat. But even the nimble filigrees of Mozart couldn’t completely draw the audience’s attention away from the fact that the women of this piece, Fiordiligi (Malin Hartelius) and Dorabella (Anna Bonitatibus) aren’t always presented in the most honorable light, farcically or otherwise. Mozart in fact kind of hedged his bets with how he advertised the opera, calling it first a “dramma giocoso,” and then opting for the more standard “opera buffa.” And those buffa elements are played to the hilt in the often outright farcical treatment given by the Zurich Opera in a fun and frolicsome production that is anchored by the facile conducting of Franz Welser-Möst.

Getting schooled in the ways of love can backfire if your teacher is certifiable, rather than certified.

If the Glyndebourne production was unusually understated, as if whispering about misogyny wouldn’t make it quite so distasteful, Welser-Möst and stage director Sven-Eric Bechtolf play this Cosi mostly for laughs, though there is a peculiar undercurrent of morbidity and cynicism which can’t be denied, highlighted by a truly odd ending where the only relatively non-scheming woman, the maid Despina (Martina Jankovâ), discovers that a final sextet can quickly become a quintet, so to speak. It’s an odd and perhaps even upsetting choice by Bechtolf, but it point out his deconstructionist approach to this piece, which is at once respectful but not afraid to take a chance once in a while.

This is an ostensibly simply staged version of Cosi fan tutte. I say apparently because through a number of gorgeously symmetrical tableaux, suddenly you start to find things just slightly off-kilter, a really brilliant visual analogue to the libretto’s skewing of romantic tangents. Notice also how large swaths of this production play out in tones of white, and then suddenly a burst of color will explode just when things are getting especially crazy. It’s another very smart choice that frankly may be subliminal in effect, but which pays intellectual dividends once it’s actually mulled over.

This is a wittily performed and beautifully sung production, with Hartelius and Bonitatibus charmingly nefarious in their interpretations, matched by the stolid voices of Javier Camarena as Ferrando and Ruben Drole as Guglielmo. Oliver Widmer is an almost Monty Python-esque Don Alfonso and walks away with his many comic scenes. The bulk of the kudos, though, need to rest squarely with Welser-Möst, who leads the Orchestra and Chorus of the Zurich Opera House with a rare combination of energy and subdued nuance. This Cosi runs nearly three and a half hours, but under Welser-Möst’s able baton, the bulk of the evening flies by like a pleasant summer breeze, warm, caressing and inviting.

Amazingly it’s only been in the past 40 years or so that the original Mozart-da Ponte version of Cosi fan tutte has been performed. Radical revisionism started almost as soon as the first production had shuttered, so shocked was some of the response to this often bitingly brittle piece. Welser-Möst, in some very cogent commentary contained in the insert booklet, states, “What is extraordinary is Mozart’s precise differentiation between emotion and feelings, both of which are put under the musical spotlight.” The conductor goes on to explicate his ideas of how superficial emotions slowly evolve into true feelings as the opera progresses, so that by the end of the evening Cosi has become less about the battle of the sexes than about the interior emotional worlds of each of the characters. As if a prescient commentary on at least the Glyndebourne production’s propensity for figurative whispering, Welser-Möst points out that nowhere else in Mozart’s oeuvre is the direction “sotto voce” used so often, as if the composer himself were aware not only of the touchy subject matter, but the fact he was attempting to musically illuminate the deepest recesses of the human heart

Mozart: Così fan tutte Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cosi fan tutte arrives on Blu-ray from ArtHaus Musik with a really crisp looking AVC encoded 1080i "live" image in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. Though a lot of this production plays out in shades of white, this is an unusually sharp and detailed Blu-ray, in fact one of the better looking live opera releases I've seen from ArtHaus, which almost always does an excellent job. The hair of the women, the finely brocaded costumes, the cubicle shelves of Don Alfonso all play out with excellent fine detail. Part of what helps this production is the often beautifully sunlit lighting design of Jurgen Hoffmann, which fills the stage with bright halos of gorgeous light. Even the closing scenes, which slowly dissolve into tones of blue, look sharp and precise. The visual sumptuousness of this production is perhaps yet another attempt to draw attention away from the oft-discussed subject matter, and this Blu-ray should help with that attempt very, very well.

Mozart: Così fan tutte Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Two lossless audio options are offered on this Blu-ray, a gorgeous sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix and a similarly excellent, if understandably narrower, LPCM 2.0 fold down. This is typically sparkling music from Mozart and the Zurich ensemble plays it with verve and flash. Interior lines are wonderfully transparent in the 7.1 mix, and Mozart's quicksilver scalar tendencies never turn into mush in either the performance or the recording. Balance is excellent throughout, and the choral singing is especially rapturous, notably the finale which bursts through the surrounds, immersing the listener in Mozart's genius. All of the principals sound fantastic here, and the fidelity throughout all ranges is sharp and clear.

Mozart: Così fan tutte Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are included on the disc. The insert booklet offers an interesting essay and synopsis.

Mozart: Così fan tutte Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cosi fan tutte has been problematical from virtually its very first performance. I have little doubt Mozart and his librettist da Ponte were only too aware of this fact and may frankly have been laughing quietly to themselves over the shocked response to their creation. This bright and often funnily farcical production leaves the controversy by the wayside and emphasizes the buffoonery, albeit with a just slightly dark, even black, sense of humor that pops up a time or two to take the audience by surprise. The Glyndebourne production was a bit more refined, but this bawdy take on Cosi may well be more entertaining and comes highly recommended.