COSI FAN TUTTE, AUGUST 2022

Opera Kipling, Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Camden Fringe Festival

A revival of Opera Kipling’s very popular production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte for the Camden Fringe Festival. The production debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019. Set on a game show island of love, this Cosi fan tutte is a modern updating of Mozart’s bittersweet comic masterpiece for both opera novices and hoary veterans, with hilarious modern surtitles that bring the piece squarely into 21st century Essex.

Director: Guido Martin-Brandis. Surtitles: Guido Martin-Brandis/Robert Tilson. Production photos by Alexander Kabanov.

Fiordiligi: Laura Curry

Dorabella: Sophie Horrocks

Ferrando: Robert Tilson

Guglielmo: Jack Lawrence Jones

Don Alfonso: Alex Jones

Despina: Olivia Lewis

Piano: Elspeth Wilkes

Musical Director: Giannis Giannopoulos

REVIEWS

Opera Now - Robert Thicknesse

“Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte is of course wildly unrealistic - what kind of laggard would take three hours to seduce someone these days? So Opera Kipling’s north London show at the gatehouse in Highgate, by removing an hour from the middle, would seem much closer to the mark… what was left was smart and sassy.

Director Guido Martin-Brandis set the show in a reality TV mashup and provided jovial surtitles. Mozart was effectively done straight: straight enough that ‘Un’aura amorosa’ brought (as it must) the feeling of how sacrilegious this whole affair is, as the path to Fiordiligi’s surrender prompted the realisation that all Mozart’s music is about things as intimate as this.”