For its spring production the Israel Opera offers Mozart’s tongue-in-cheek Cosi Fan Tutte, in which sisters Fiordiligi (Noa Danon, Yael Levita) and Dorabella (Naama Goldman, Anat Czarny) vow to remain faithful to their fiancées, Giuliemo (Renato Dolcini, Oded Reich) and Ferrando (Mark Milhofer, Alasdair Kent) who are off to the wars, or are they? See, the guys have accepted a bet from Don Alfonso that the women will betray them at the drop of a hat. So they dress up as a couple of Albanians and passionately woo the sisters who ultimately succumb. Oh dear!! Not to worry. It all ends happily in a glorious sextet celebrating the ups and downs of life.
The director is award-winning Armenian-Canadian movie and recent opera director Atom Egoyan, who decided to set the opera at an upscale boarding school, which he has said “makes the whole story more believable.” Cosi Fan Tutte runs from May 31 to June 15 at the The Opera House in Tel Aviv.