Singing good - but...

This is a good example of how not to do Cosi. The tempi were often painfully slow, with every last ounce of feeling being dragged out of the action, when NOT doing this is exactly the point. Mozart is contrasting the light hearted music with the pains of the lovers as a model of how dire events go on every day while the rest of us carry on as before. Perhaps the worst example was the aria Donne mie, where Guglielmo sings of the fickleness of women against the background of what sounds like a dance tune. It was, quite simply, excruciating, just totally wrong in every way. The sets and unnecessary artifices didn't help either. Pity, as the singing was good, but dear oh dear: neither producer nor conductor seemed to understand what Mozart was saying.