Così fan tutte

Nothing is for forever. And people make mistakes. And yet, letting go is the hardest challenge when you're burning with love for the first time and want nothing more than to hold on to it forever. But can you feel as intensely forever as you did in the beginning? Così fan tutte in Benedict Andrews’s new production deals with the exuberant feelings that drive young love in the rush of hormones. Sometimes it touches the fringes of human relationships, where one threatens to lose oneself in the search for intensity. Mozart's opera of 1790 would not be so significant to this day had he not also immediately dealt with the instability of it all. Thus the two young couples, who think they have already discovered the essence of true love, meet two experienced counterparts in Don Alfonso and Despina. An experiment begins in which the men put the fidelity of their partners to the test by playing a game of disguise. What remains is disillusionment. And the possibility of a painful realization: only freedom and the longing for union are certain. Disappointment and rejection are part of the game – because no love is ideal.

In his first Academy Concert at the Bayerische Staatsoper Opera in 2020, Vladimir Jurowski, then designated General Music Director, combined works by Mozart and Bruckner. He now conducts Così fan tutte, his first Mozart opera as GMD. Jurowski and Australian theatre and film director Benedict Andrews will collaborate for the first time with the new production. It is also a BSO debut for Andrews, who has recently been devoting more time to his film projects: Seberg with Kristen Stewart, which premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, and previously Una with Rooney Mara, which screened at the 2016 Telluride Film Festival. As Resident Director at the Sydney Theatre Company and later at the Schaubühne in Berlin, Benedict Andrews increasingly directed New Drama and British Drama. Both here and at the Young Vic in London, he has worked with set designer Magda Willi on productions including Blackbird by David Harrower, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Rescued by Edward Bond, and several plays by Marius von Mayenburg. He also has a long association with costume designer Victoria Behr, who has been named costume designer of the year several times in Theater magazine's critics' poll, for institutions such as the Young Vic Theatre in London, the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, the Komische Oper Berlin, the Nationale Opera Amsterdam and the English National Opera.