Così fan tutte

Sometimes the saucy, clever maid knows more about men and love than her aristocratic, sophisticated employers. When the great singing actress Teresa Stratas, as Despina, explains the facts of life to Teresa Zylis-Gara’s Fiordiligi and Rosalind Elias’s Dorabella, you know the two ladies are in for an education in the way the world truly works. Walter Berry is at his ironic best as Don Alfonso, the cynical philosopher who sets up this “school for lovers.” As much as Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte adored women, they weren’t above a bit of scandalous humor—just to set the record straight.