A Night at the Opera and a Morning Walk: Cosi Fan Tutte and Goldfinches

Autumn now. Nights getting cold. I grab a quick walk this morning, puff up the hill to look out over the bay where all kinds of weather are laid out: cloud, sun, squalls. I try to work out if the squalls will get me and decide to walk on a bit further then turn back for home. Rooks call. Goldfinches still chatter and sing. I get a bit wet.

Last night we go to the local cinema for a night at the opera. Covent Garden's new production of Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" being broadcast live - a modern setting tricked out with false moustaches and theatre flats and games. The Old Man do overhear a woman complaining (as he lurches for the ice-creams at the interval) that she just hates it. Not me.
There is nothing wrong with the singing... all's very well there ... though The Old Man doesn't quite agree. And of course I do like the acting and the production which smacks of pantomime and trickery and what else could you have for such a plot. (Let's just strike a wager with the boys that their girlfriends may or may not be unfaithful... and then do everything we can to make them so.) And if I may exercise my muscles and stretch a point ... I am thinking that all this playing around with people's loves and desires may prove a contemporary theme. How about "Les Liasons Dangereuses" by Laclos... published in the same decade as the premiere of Mozart's  "Cosi"? Yeah. Yeah. Mischief makers. And the production did its best to make some bitter-sweet sense of the ending of this crazy plot. All in all a happy night out for me.