Opera: Lismore Opera Festival at Lismore Castle
Staged in a pop-up theatre in the stable courtyard of the castle grounds, Lismore Opera Festival’s Cosi Fan Tutte draws us straight into a bright, horsey world peopled with characters resonant of Jilly Cooper’s saucy chick lit novel, Riders.
Despite WC Fields warning, the presence of animals as extras has a tradition in opera. In Lismore, two scene-stealing equine heads look out over stable half-doors as the opera’s crucial wager is settled before our jodhpur clad protagonists saddle up leaving their tearful girlfriends . The plot hinges on whether the ladies will prove faithful when put to the test of being seduced by each other’s disguised fiancés.
