Luisa, Fiordiligi and Dorabella in New York City.
I spent ten days in the Big Apple at the beginning of April. It was my cultural Spring Break in the city. As usual, I met my friends and we visited museums, art galleries, concert halls and restaurants. We also went to the Metropolitan Opera where we met Luisa Miller and reconnected with the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Luisa Miller is the heroine of a Verdi opera by the same name. Fiordiligi and Dorabella are the much-vilified sisters of Cos ì fan tutte , a Mozart opera which premiered in Vienna in 1790, one year before the composer’s death. Rest assured, this is not another blog on misogynist operas, although both operas treat women poorly, but on the decisions taken by the two sisters and their boyfriends. I was keen to discover Luisa Miller , about a doomed romantic heroine from a Schiller drama. The innocent Luisa is the victim of a loving but selfish father and of a jealous lover, himself tricked by an unscrupul...