A revolutionary treatment of one of the "sacred cows" of the opera repertoire. Daniel Barenboim, who here conducts, invited Munich film director Doris Dorrie to produce Cosi fan tutte for the Staatsoper Berlin in 2002, and the resulting project drew plaudits from die-hard Mozart fans as well as introducing a whole new generation to the opera genre.
Handel’s second opera for the so-called “rival queens,” Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, was Admeto, which had its premiere in 1727. Their purported rivalry—created more by the public than by the singers themselves—resulted most famously in the cat fight parodied by John Gay in his Beggar’s Opera of the same year. The operas Handel wrote for these reigning divas are as musically brilliant as any of his other works. But as a result of his attempts to structure dramas that would give absolutely equal value to two leading ladies, the rival-queen operas are dramatically problematic and strain credulity at times, Admeto not excepted.