Comic opera in two acts Music by Mozart Libretto" by LORENZO DA PONTE
Sung in the English translation by THE REV MARMADUKE BROWNE , reVised by JOHN COX
English National Opera Production, direct from the London Coliseum
The notion that all women are fickle is the subject of a wager laid by Don Alfonso. Eager to prove him wrong, Guglielmo and Ferrando pretend to go off to the wars, then return, disguised as Albanians, and each woos the other's girl. Such chauvinistic pranks are clearly not a good idea. as the men are just as hurt by the girls' capitulation as are their victims.
English National Opera Chorus, chorus-master HOWARD WILLIAMS
English National Opera
Orchestra. leader BARRY COLLINS , conductor
Sir Charles Mackerras
HAZEL VIVIENNE (continuo) Act 1
8.30* Lorenzo da Ponte
Although there's between us
An ocean immense
Which takes seeing and touching
Away from our sense, It doesn't talce loving:
It makes it the stronger.
Though tve've no hope of meeting,
So fast is life fleeting, Yet this little greeting
Is the better the longer.
This is part of a doggerel letter to his sisters which the librettist wrote in his later years, translated by Wayland Young , who suggests that the conversion to Christianity required of da Ponte by his father accounts for his roguish behaviour and many of the gifts he brought to his collaboration with Mozart.
8.45* Cosi fan tutte. Act 2