Mozart - Cosi fan Tutte / Biel, Hoglind, Tibell, Florimo, Linden, Severin, Ostman, Drottningholm Opera

... in the prettiest production possible, staged in the meticulously restored Court Theater of Drottningholm -- The Queen's Palace -- west of Stockholm. The prettily painted sets and stage machinery are all precisely what audiences of the rococo late 1700's would have seen. The costumes suggest to me -- I'm no musicological haberdasher -- a slightly later era, but they're lovely to behold and well-sewn for vivacious acting. The too-seducible sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella are sung and acted by two pretty young Swedish maidens, Ann Christine Biel and Maria Höglind; their lithe figures in their matching white gowns are pretty enough for an impressionist painting. Ulla Severin is perfectly cast as the saucy maid Despina. The two lovers/seducers Ferrando and Guglielmo are acted and sung by two dashing Swedes, Lars Tibell and Magnus Linden. Only the portly old cynic Alfonso, sung by Enzo Florimo, is anything but pretty to look at, and even he could be regarded as "cute" by some.I dwell on the visual attractions of this production because they are its most unique attribute. This is an historically authentic a mis-en-scene as any could hope for, short of garbing the whole audience in aristocratic finery of Mozart's era. The splendor is somewhat muted by the grainy soft-focus TV filming done in 1984, but the camera-work is excellent -- all the right close-ups in all the right places -- and the sound recording is good enough.The singing is also "good enough" -- and better than "good enough" in the most important arias -- though all four of the principals could have profited by more current 2012-level historically informed vocal technique. Their voices are lovely but their sense of embellishment is somewhat plain."Così Fan Tutte" -- "They're All the Same" -- is of course also Mozart's most wickedly misogynistic opera. Remember, please, that our charming rascal Wolfi merely put music to the witty libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, that shameless misogynist. One might even suppose that da Ponte portrayed himself in the character of Alfonso, whose plotting determines the course of the drama.