DVD 5049 COSI FAN TUTTE

I could only find fault with this production in the beginning: Guglielmo (Hakan Hagegard) and Ferrando (Gosta Windbergh) are in a tavern complete with tavern wenches and they are wearing Elvis Presley-type wigs!!! Everyone in the tavern is standing--there are no tables or chairs or walls for that matter...the boys are arguing with Don Alfonso (Claudio Desderi) about the fidelity of their loved ones, as usual. They leave the stage and the girls enter the same empty space: Fiordiligi (Barbara Madra) and Dorabella (Anne Sophie von Otter). They are wearing frizzy Marie Antoinette-type wigs and gowns with yards of drapery. They begin to sing about their lovers and actually get on the floor in those gowns and roll around. A woman in a gown like that would never do that!!! Then there are a couple unusual twists: Don Alfonso is constantly trying to make out with Despina (Ruth Ann Swenson). Once the Albanian knights make their entrance, one of the three men are always lurking in the background eavesdropping on the girls. Instead of the usual song remarking on their handsome noses, mustaches and feet, they have substituted another tune. (I wish I had the original libretto to see what directors usually use or not use...) The staging doesn't get better as the production proceeds. There are practically no props; everyone just sits on the floor, etc. BUT, the singing is great. I hadn't heard of Barbara Madra before (amazing how many wonderful singers I've never heard of) but she was a wonderful Fiordiligi, very animated. The final seduction scene with Ferrando was especially good. At the finale, the girls are singing to their original boyfriends; then they exchange places and sing to their "Albanian" boyfriends. I think we are supposed to not know who gets who in the end. More so than usual. Armin Jordan conducted. There are French subtitles. The DVD quality is good, the picture slightly out of focus, like a copy of a copy. Sound was good. Recommended.