Frankfurt's new school of lovers

It is one of the most beautiful and yet cruelest experiments in opera history: Take two couples whose love seems unshakable and subject them to a cynical test of human fidelity. With Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Così fan tutte, the Frankfurt Opera dares to open the season with a masterpiece whose sparkling surface has always concealed an abyss of disillusionment. The exciting question of the evening is therefore not only whether love will fall apart, but how a new Frankfurt interpretation will stage this case.

Since its premiere in 1790, this final work from the congenial collaboration between Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte has provoked. Long dismissed as too frivolous or even immoral, "The School for Lovers" now reveals its full, disturbing modernity. It holds up a mirror to us, revealing a truth as banal as it is painful: That's just how everyone does it.

General Music Director Thomas Guggeis is responsible for the musical anatomy of this psychological drama. Following his impressive Figaro , he now turns his attention to the third part of the Da Ponte trilogy and encounters a director whose reputation for psychological depth precedes her: French director Mariame Clément , celebrated at venues such as Glyndebourne for her precise Mozart interpretations, makes her eagerly anticipated debut in Frankfurt with this production.

The boldness of this new production is also evident in the cast. Instead of relying on seasoned veterans, the house relies on a completely young ensemble made up of its own talents, members of the opera studio, and up-and-coming guests. This deliberate rejection of established conventions promises an interpretation of immediate, emotional veracity. It is an attempt not only to play the complex emotional worlds of Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and their ill-fated fiancés, but to make them almost physically tangible, drawn from the spirit of a new generation.

It promises to be an evening whose real drama only begins when the final applause has died down and the uncomfortable questions fill the silence.

The premiere of “Così fan tutte” will take place on Sunday, September 21, 2025, at 6 p.m. at the Frankfurt Opera House .