Women are Fickle:?loose translation Cosi fan Tutti

Is there a better operetta than Mozart's Cosi fan Tutti? I doubt it. Six well-matched singers and some ensemble boys and girls and Mozart's music were enough for a miraculous happening.

This happened in Billings Montana on Friday, 23 March 2007 and Sunday, 25 March 2007 with the Rimrock Opera Company. Lovely duets, trios, quartets, quintets and sextets in addition to a couple of nice solos by all the principal singers. Director Doug Nagel did his usual outstanding job of casting more or less equal singers who blended well with each other. Lisa Lombardy sounds better than ever and Amy Logan is great as Despina with multiple disguises. A nice role for a chambermaid. Everybody is funny when they have a chance. And we all have the opportunity to learn the lesson of tolerance for our spouse's foibles. The picture to the left is from a Salzburg production of the opera buffa.


I'm very glad to have made the long trek back from watching baseball in Tucson AZ during the week to hear the opera in Billings MT. We left Tucson at 0830 on Friday, stopped in Albuquerque to visit Sharon, Leo and 14 month old Diego on Friday evening after Sharon finished her 4 th grade school teaching. We lose an hour going from AZ to NM as the latter still believes that changing to Daylight Saving Time is a good thing. Diego will be off and walking or running very soon. He is down to holding on with one finger now.

We take off from the Hotel Blue at 0730 on Saturday, encounter a snowstorm near the higher elevations of Santa Fe and really hard rain in the lower elevations of southern Colorado. We get to Denver about 1400, and then on to Casper, running into another snowstorm in southern Wyoming, arriving about 7pm, to get refreshed by the Outback Restaurant: even with a rookie waiter it was still very good.

We get in to Billings about 1130 Sunday morning, having sailed up the 25 and 90 for a thousand miles in a day and a half, just in time for Cosi fan Tutti. It was well worth the trip.