Flower Power Cosi!

How opera is a grand part of my life already. I constantly have little tunes from my favorite productions nagging me endlessly playing themselves in my head but yesterday I wanted to shoot that mother fucker in the face!

To cut the long story short I had had singing lessons yesterday and was in my friend’s house drinking, laughing and talking. But the thing is, I wanted to hook up with this said friend, but was too shy to just do it. So the aria I sang in my class kept playing itself in my head, “É amore un ladroncello” Dorabella’s second aria from Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. And most specifically the part where she says “E toglie dá la pace, come gli piace il cor” (He steals and gives you peace, as he pleases itself). God, I felt Mozart laughing at my face going “You idiotic coward!” the rascal that he was! Well, we did hook up in the end, but that was just too weird not to mention!

Speaking of Cosi Fan Tutte I thought I’d talk about it since I already mentioned it. Well, my experience with Cosi is not very grand, I’ve only watched one entire production and again it was a modern day kind of production. I actually about 3 years ago tried to watch it since me and a friend were singing the first sister’s duet (Ah Guardda Sorella), but after the duet I feel asleep. I’m very ashamed of that, since the production (now I see it) was very good, it was a preoduction from the Glyndebourne Opera Festival  with Miah Persson as Fiordiligi and Luca Pisaroni as Guglielmo, both performers that I worship!

Well anyways, the production that I did see was actually from the Berlin Staatsoper. It’s the 2002 production, the hippie one. Kind of crazy, but I really liked it! Here is the cast list:

Fiordiligi (Dorothea Röschmann)
Dorabella (Katharina Kammerloher)
Guglielmo (Hanno Müller-Brachmann)
Ferrando (Werner Güra)
Despina (Daniela Bruera)
Don Alfonso (Roman Trokel)
Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin
Conductor (Daniel Barenboim)
Director (Doris Dörrie)

One of the main reasons why I watched this especific production is because of Dorothea Roschmann. I ADORE her! I mean, really, she has a way to do Mozart no one can imitate, sometimes I think she born to sing Mozart you know. Sometimes I hear people say that Renée Fleming was born to sing Strauss, well then, I think Dorothea was born to sing Mozart, I've never seen a better Countess!

Well now on the production itself, one of the high lights I must say was the fact that Ferrando actually takes Dorabella’s bra to show Guglielmo how unfaithful she actually is. I loved it how the girls played the sisters, Fiordiligi the ever so faithful girlfriend and Dorabella not really caring all that much, which explains her willingness to go the extra mile with a stranger who is actually her sister’s fiancé.

I thought the sets were real cool; they reminded me of a Barbie House which for me is awesome. And the costumes were also quite cute, specially the sisters, those sixties little dresses are just to die for! And I’m totally for this kind of adaptation, I mean, these operas live today because, apart from the exquisite music, they speak to people and they show people dealing with things that we deal with nowadays. Relationships, jealousy, betrayal, forgiveness (or not) are things that are timeless, so these pieces can be set at any age!

One thing that I’ve had to do to watch this production and actually understand it is finding the libretto of the piece online and scrolling it down as I watched the video. Since the video itself had no subtitles and I can’t understand Italian very well. Interviews in Italian I get sometimes because it’s so very much like Portuguese and you kind of acquire a little bit of Italian fluency by singing on the language so much. But anyways, it’s very tiresome to do this, especially because in this production they cut out some things so the scenes would make sense, so there were times I was completely lost scrolling the libretto frantically!

One last thing, the guy who played Ferrando looked SUPER hot in his hippie clothes, he looked like a hippie Legolas, which is so fine with me, especially when he took his shirt off. Who said opera is boring? I actually use that line a lot, I use it when I post hot opera stuff on facebook, like the Comte Ory Sandwich scene, or the ending of the third act of Manon.