It’s been four years since Mozart’s revered comedy was performed on a London stage, but the English National Opera’s upcoming production of Così fan tutte has had some whimsy injected thanks to a collaboration with Improbable, an improv-based theatre company. The opera follows the outcome the cynical placing of a bet by two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, that if tested their fiancées, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, would have affairs, and soprano Lucy Crowe OBE and mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven are starring as the two sisters.
With Olivier Award-winner Phelim McDermott at the helm and Critics’ Circle Young Talent Award winner Dinis Sousa conducting, this co-production (in partnership with New York’s Metropolitan Opera), written originally at the height of Mozart’s career in the 1790s, has now been transformed by set (by Tom Pye) and costume design (by Laura Hopkins) to unfurl on 1950s Coney Island.