Opera NexGen Presents Così fan tutte W.A. Mozart An Opera in Two Acts Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte Friday, March 12th, 7pm ET & Conductor Sunday, March 14th, 2pm ET Jesse Leong Director Lauren Lenz Our Mission Opera NexGen's mission is to provide unparalleled operatic performances with a diverse artistic community. We seek to discover the next generation of talent with our company founded on equality, equity, inclusivity, and excellence. It is our aim to cast solely on vocal ability above all other credentials. Our goal is to ensure that opera will continue to thrive for generations to come by pioneering the scope of live virtual performance. Opera NexGen Anti-Discrimination Policy Opera NexGen is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, weight, or veteran status in its membership. For over 55 years, Design Works has been helping homeowners and designers transform their space with premium tile, natural stone, custom cabinetry, shutters, countertops and more. Through their famil4y of brands—Design Works, Intended Spaces Cabinetry and Superior Shutters—they offer everything you need to personalize the look and functionality of your space from one convenient source. Così fan tutte Synopsis ACT I Don plants the idea that Grayson and Will’s girlfriends (Dora and Lily, respectively) are capable of cheating on them. Grayson and Will fervently deny this, so Don proposes a bet. He’ll orchestrate a plan to prove to the men that women are unfaithful given the opportunity. Grayson and Will accept, confident in their chances of victory. Later, Dora and Lily admire Grayson and Will’s pictures, singing their praises and suspect that they will get engaged soon. Don joins the call visibly upset. Dora and Lily try to ascertain what is wrong, and Don reveals that Grayson and Will are being deployed immediately. Grayson and Will join the call. Everyone laments the situation, and all say their goodbyes. Diana logs into a chat with her friends (Dora and Lily) after work. They join the call in tears without explanation for their sadness. After the women finally reveal the cause of their distress, Diana tries to cheer them up, saying it might be better for them if the men are gone. She suggests they should try to meet someone new. Looking for comfort instead of life advice, the women sign off. Don, looking for Dora and Lily, finds his ex-girlfriend Diana on the call instead. He realizes she could help him with his plan and offers to pay her to help introduce the women to two new men. She agrees. Don adds Grayson and Will to the chat, disguised as two new men named Constantine and Guy. Diana is not impressed, and when Dora and Lily join the call, they are furious. Don feigns surprise seeing the men and says they are his old friends. Lily insists she will never be unfaithful. Don begs the women to be kinder. Guy (Will) tries to convince the women that he and Constantine are ‘nice’ guys. After the women have left in disgust, Grayson and Will try to convince Don to abandon the bet, but Don asks for one more day. Later, Grayson and Will (still disguised as Constantine and Guy) interrupt a call between Dora and Lily. The men are visibly drunk, claiming they intend to drink themselves to death while Don tries to talk them down. Diana joins the chaos and leaves with Don to call a doctor. Don returns with Diana disguised as a natural healer who cures the men’s alcohol poisoning with a crystal. The men ask Dora and Lily to blow them a kiss to help them feel better, which enrages the women and erases any sympathy they might have felt for them. ACT II Diana tries to convince her friends to give their new suitors a chance. She swipes through Tinder, which piques Dora’s curiosity. After browsing a few profiles, they begin to think perhaps Guy and Constantine are not their worst options. The women decide Dora will see Guy and Lily will see Constantine. Dora and Lily have an awkward conversation with the men, and they decide to split into separate calls. Guy (Will) asks Dora if he can send her a necklace to show his love, and she declines. He is persistent and she eventually gives in if only to make Guy stop. Dora realizes her situation is more exhausting than she anticipated. Guy (Will) takes a screenshot of her to convince Grayson and Don that she was flirting with him. Meanwhile, Lily has started developing feelings for Constantine and she feels guilty. Grayson and Will touch base on their progress and Will sends Grayson the screenshot he took of Dora, which infuriates him. Don joins the call and tells the men to press on and Diana meets with the women to see how they’re doing. Dora is annoyed with Guy while Lily is upset with the other women. Lily blames them for her misery and reveals she’s falling for Constantine. Once alone, Lily drunkenly plans to join Will and Grayson where they have been deployed, and Constantine (Grayson) joins the call. He convinces her to calm down and agree to stay with him. Will and Don join the call with their cameras off. Will is furious that Lily would betray him. Don is unconcerned with the apparent unfaithfulness. He says that the men should marry the women anyway because, “all women are like that.” A chat appears on the screen between Lily, Dora, and Diana. The women explain how manipulative the men have been. Diana agrees and decides to help them see how far the men are willing to go. Diana calls the men and says that Dora and Lily are willing to marry them and run away together. Dora, Lily, Constantine (Grayson), and Guy (Will) drink to their upcoming wedding. Don joins the celebration and calls an officiant to bring the paperwork. Diana appears in disguise again, this time as the officiant, and sends a marriage contract for everyone to sign. Right after the signatures are collected, Don pretends to get a text from Grayson and Will that they have returned from war. The women, realizing the men will be upset if they find out about their plan, kick Constantine and Guy off the call. The men quickly rejoin as themselves and find the marriage contract PDF file in the chat. They pretend to get angry before revealing that their new fiancées were them in disguise all along. The women are upset and confused. Eventually, everyone skeptically agrees to move on and pretend it never happened. Così fan tutte W.A. Mozart Cast in order of appearance Artistic team Ferrando “Grayson” Conductor Angel Romero Jesse Leong Guglielmo “Will” Matthew Reynolds Director Lauren Lenz Don alfonso “Don” Jeremy Harr Assistant director Fiordiligi “Lily” Sarah Baumgarten Claire Galloway Act I Pianist Dorabella “dora” Ramsey Reyes Taylor-Alexis DuPont Despina “Diana” Act II Pianist Arianna Paz Aaron Thacker Director’s Note There’s no denying that Mozart and Da Ponte’s Cosi fan tutte has a complicated place in music history. One of Mozart’s later pieces, it was written two years before his death and was his third time working with Da Ponte as librettist. The pair’s preceding works, Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, were highly regarded at the time of their premiere and are still frequently performed; however, Cosi was considered too indelicate in the 18th and 19th centuries to gain much traction. It was not included in the standard repertoire until the mid-1900s. Today this piece is performed often in American houses and is a favorite of many opera-goers for its over-the-top storyline and memorable musical themes. Still, it remains controversial for new reasons. Challenges present in doing this work are immediately apparent. In the first scene, Don Alfonso introduces his thesis—all women are not only capable of infidelity, but will act on that urge given the opportunity. Even the title, Cosi fan tutte, translates to “All women are like that.” This misogynistic tone ripples through the entire opera, starting at the beginning with our male characters making a bet: will Ferrando and Guglielmo’s partners be unfaithful to them if awarded the chance? When the two young men show up in disguise to find out, it turns out that no, they won’t, but Don Alfonso refuses to accept this. Rather than accept his assumptions about women are wrong, he pushes forward further involving Dorabella and Fiordiligi’s friend, Despina. This only complicates the situation by putting the women in a sympathetic position open to manipulation by Despina and Don Alfonso. They are manipulated into these compromising situations by people that they trust, then are chastised for doing exactly what anyone else in their position would do. There is no winning for any of the characters here, except Don Alfonso, who “wins” by forcing his perspective into reality. By making specific cuts and updating the subtitles to reflect modern speech, this setting of Cosi fan tutte strives to tell more of Dorabella and Fiordiligi’s perspective where instead of silly, naïve girls who are easily swayed into betraying their fianceés, they are the victims of their friends’ and partners’ cruel game. This piece tries to live in a moral gray area. Is the bet a harmless prank, or a gross pretext to prove a misogynistic point? One interpretation feels more plausible at the time it was written, and the other more plausible in a modern context.