Beautiful Disillusion

Fidelity, specifically that of the feminine variety, is one of the most inexhaustible themes in literature, and its frequent recurrence, even up to the present day, may have something to do with the fact that we know as much (or as little) now as we did in the age of Homer, of Chaucer, of Ariosto, Rabelais and Cervantes, and indeed of Lorenzo da Ponte. Writers from the late medieval period onward – primarily male, it should be said – have presented a library’s worth of anecdotal evidence which proves only that for every paragon of virtue there is an equal and opposite example of faithlessness; most however, are in agreement that reckless curiosity on the part of any man will never end well. 

In Robert Borgmann’s consistently fascinating new production of Così fan tutte, which opened recently at the Deutsche Oper, that curiosity is willed…