Two pairs of young lovers, a cynical old philosopher and an irreverent maid: the set-up for Così fan tutte could hardly be simpler. But Mozart and Da Ponte’s great comedy of the human heart is open to a thousand interpretations, few more compelling than this 2002 production directed by Jürgen Flimm for Opernhaus Zürich. Flimm’s light-touch staging gives limitless scope to conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt – unrivalled in this repertoire – and a truly glorious cast, with Cecilia Bartoli as a passionate Fiordiligi and Liliana Nikiteanu as her more carefree sister Dorabella. With Agnes Baltsa as Despina and Roberto Saccà as Ferrando, the result is timeless.
Le nozze di Figaro
Few modern conductors knew how to get to the soul of Mozart like the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt – the Viennese period-performance specialist who was equally at ease with historic instruments and the world’s greatest orchestras. In 1996 he conducted the forces of the Zurich Opera House and an excellent ensemble cast in Jurgen Flimm’s production of Le nozze di Figaro – which moved the action between different eras and locations to try and find the eternal truths at the heart of this greatest of all comic operas. The results are just as revealing – and as beautiful – as you’d expect.
Don Giovanni
Mozart’s Don Giovanni is an opera that contains infinities: the adventures of the great seducer, his servant Leporello and the women he has wronged are as eternal (and as fascinating) as human nature itself. Jürgen Flimm’s classic production for Opernhaus Zürich leans into the shadows beneath the comic surface – and in this performance from 2001 Rodney Gilfry is a truly aristocratic Giovanni, with the sublime Italian mezzo Cecilia Bartoli at the pinnacle of her vocal and dramatic form as a mercurial Donna Elvira. Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts, bringing all his unrivalled feeling for 18th-century music to a score that never grows old.
Roméo et Juliette
The most famous tragic love story in history, conducted by a legend of opera: superstar Plácido Domingo leads the stellar Juan Diego Flórez and Aida Garifullina as star-crossed lovers in Jürgen Flimm’s atmospheric staging of “Roméo et Juliette” by Charles Gounod at the Wiener Staatsoper. Domingo, Flórez and Garifullina tell a tale of “tragic love that has the air of Hollywood about it!” (Die Presse)