The Russian director Kirill Serebrennikow, who is critical of the regime, has released his version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Così fan tutte" at the Komische Oper Berlin. The 53-year-old staged the play about love, jealousy and infidelities five years ago via video transmissions from his house arrest in Moscow at the time for the Zurich Opera House. Serebrennikow now lives in exile in Berlin and was able to oversee the work himself.

Mozart apparently lets the deeply in love Ferrando (Caspar Singh) and Guglielmo (Hubert Zapiór) go to war to test the loyalty of their partners Fiordiligi (Nadja Mchantaf) and Dorabella (Susan Zarrabi). Instead, Don Alfonso (Günter Papendell), with the help of Despina (Alma Sadé), entangles everyone in a nasty intrigue with reversed roles, from which ultimately nobody benefits.

Serebrennikow, who recently presented his film "Tchaikovsky's Wife" at the Cannes Festival, realizes the story with its characters on several levels, and extras take on the roles of the swapped lovers and their subconscious," the director explained. Mozart is "ultimately about young people who encounter a hard reality and understand that everything is damn complex". Also in love.

With the war in Ukraine, the staging also has a (frighteningly) real connection. Mozart's depiction of war has romanticizing traits, "to put it more drastically, one could almost perceive it as propaganda," as Serebrennikov sees it. He accompanies Mozart's marching sounds sung by the choir with images of war and mourners. "In my country, which began the war, young people, mostly poisoned by propaganda, go into a senseless and monstrous war to murder and die."

After Olga Neuwirth's "American Lulu" based on Alban Berg and Rossini's "Il barbiere di Siviglia", Serebrennikow has realized his third directorial work at the Komische Oper with "Così fan tutte". It is the prelude to all three operas that Mozart wrote to libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838). Serebrennikov's "Le nozze di Figaro" and finally "Don Giovanni" follow, whose death appearance in the finale Serebrennikov already has musically quoted.

For everything there was continued cheering for soloists, choir and orchestra under the direction of Katharina Müllner.

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