Mozart Così fan tutte (sets) Opéra National du Rhin, December 2005 Director David McVicar Costumes Tanya McCallin Lighting Paule Constable
The production was also presented at the Opera de Oviedo in December 2006 and at the Scottish Opera in April 2009
Reviews for the Scottish Opera production
Reviews for the Opéra National du Rhin production (some in French)
I don’t think I have seen in decades a more lavish and sumptuous sequence of set designs than those conceived and realized for this wonderful opera by Yannis Thavoris. In the opening scene a ravishing seascape dominated by two immutable rocks - symbolic of the sisters’ initial fidelity, as Fiordiligi would have us believe in ‘Come scoglio’ - is visible through the windows of an officers’ club. McVicar and Thavoris transplant the action to a period some 100 years after the composition, which does less damage to its plausibility than an up-to-the-minute contemporary setting, while preserving a sense of a ‘temps perdu’ in a slightly unreal milieu. After the men’s three trios, the walls vanish into the wings to reveal - astonishment! - an exquisite cliffside garden, overlooking the sea with its twin ‘scoglii’, which becomes more overgrown as the lovers’ emotional entanglements become knottier and thornier during the course of Don Alfonso’s cruel charade. Thavoris makes the transitions from indoors to outdoors - is there a Mozart score which more graphically exudes a sense of the al fresco than Così? - with effortless continuity and largely without the need for drop curtains to mask scene changes, a signal achievement in this opera. (Opera magazine)
... le beau décor, symbolique pas plus qu’il n’en faut, de Yannis Thavoris. Les différents tableaux s’enchaînent librement à vue, les cloisons s’ouvrant sur la mer par deux grandes portes-fenêtres, parfois closes, ou s’envolant vers les cintres pour laisser place à une jetée encadrée par deux grands rochers. Ces derniers, symboles de la constancede Fiordiligi, se volatiliseront en éclats à la fin de l’histoire. (ForumOpera.com)