Cosi fan tutte at the L.A. Phil ThursdayLo

The Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel presented their third Mozart Opera at the Disney Hall last night.  All three of these operas were written by Mozart in partnership with Lorenzo da Ponte who wrote the words.  The opera presented 2 years ago was "Don Giovanni."  The second was "The Marriage of Figaro."  Currently the orchestra is presenting "Cosi fan tutte" which roughly means 'All women behave that way.'  The story is about two friends, Ferrando and Guglielmo, in love with sisters but are challenged by Don Alfonso to test their ladies' love by pretending to go away with the navy and instead dress up as Turks and attempt to woo the sisters. This turns into a bet with the maid, Despina, helping Don Alfonso by encouraging the sisters to have fun.  Well, the sisters do kind of fall for the two Turks, ending up with the one they to whom they are not engaged.  The ending is kind of happy with the original couples back together but not too happy about what had happen over this long one day in their lives.

The orchestra was great and the singing wonderful.  The set, designed by Zaha Hadid, architect was very interesting, kind of a white skate board park.  The costumes by Hussein Chalayan were also interesting.  In the first scene they look like they were wearing summer wear from J. Crew.  The last act, the wedding has all four, yes the men too, wearing dresses.

Here are some pictures from the performance:

Gustavo directing the smaller orchestra at the front left side of the stage.

Left is Roxana Constantinescu, (Dorabella), the Romanian mezzo-soprano.  To the right is Miah Perrson, (Fiordiligi) the second sister who is a renowned Swedish soprano.  Behind are lyric tenor Alek Shrader (Fernando) and Philippe Sly (Guglielmo) the French-Canadian bass-baritone all in their summer pastels.  

The dreamy sisters thinking about having fun with the strangers in town.

The guys in the "Turks" outfits with the girls preparing to marry the "strangers."

Here are the dismayed couples getting married to their original partners in their wedding dresses.

This is the maid, Despina, played by soprano Rosemary Joshua and the scheming Don Alfonso, Rod Gilfrey, bass.  They are celebrating the success of their plot. 

This photo shows a bit of the orchestra and the interesting set taken during a rehearsal.