Cosí fan tutte programme book 2023

I was interested in the idea that the girls undergo a process of self-liberation as they begin to take
joy in renouncing the values of their past lives, and choose new lovers. This made me wonder what
other changes the two women could experience. We have located the action in an Anglo-Irish
stately pile in the 1910s. We are riffing off this period, and using its rich palette to elaborate the
story. This pre-revolutionary Ireland, as Roy Foster describes so eloquently in his book Vivid Faces,
posited so many visions of the future as part of the burgeoning debate for nationhood. Feminism,
socialism, romanticism, Bolshevism are just some of the ideas which intersected in the zeitgeist of
the era. This situation has allowed us to push the comedy of the piece.
What if two dimwitted, landed West Britons seriously underestimated their fiancées? What if they
stupidly assumed the characters of two far more interesting men – Dion Boucicault-inspired artistes
(based on the “O’Kalem” company, who were making early silent films in Ireland at this time) – to
test the fidelity of their lovers? What if, in leaving their two girlfriends free to think for themselves, the
girls tune into and absorb the possibilities of the socio-political movements of the time? What if these
two upper middle-class ingénues not only discover a new emotional identity in their new-found desire
with their new boyfriends, but also a new-found intellectual and social mojo? What if, by the end of the
opera, these girls become Constance Markievicz-inspired political radicals?
We have developed this theme of the Anglo-Irish stately pile as a kind of constructed container
for the two cloistered, naive young women, and there’s a parallel between the house and
the land which it is inhabiting, and their own bodies, which they initially try to lock away from
society and turn into fortresses, before going on a journey of discovery. There’s a parallel
between Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and the transformation of Fiordiligi and Dorabella.
The values which confine them at the start of the opera fall away as they listen to the forward
thinking ideas of Despina, who we have loosely modelled on the radical trade unionist
and feminist Louie Bennett. Despina encourages Fiordiligi and Dorabella to reframe their
understanding of love. Once they start rethinking that idea for themselves, the floodgates open,
and all inherited assumptions about reality are up for debate, leading the two women to the
question which must prompt all revolutions: does reality have to be like this?
As Despina says to the girls in Act I “vi par, ma non è ver”, “it seems so but it is not true”. The O’Kalems
are actually fakes, the constancy of a lover is as fragile as the autumn leaves, and the capability and
agency of the two young women at the centre of the story, which is assumed by the men around them
to be nil, only continues to grow as they discover new versions of themselves. Instead of Da Ponte’s
tagline, I might suggest: All changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born.
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