Advertising is weird, right?

On seeing the fairly staid poster design for this production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, I have to admit I was only mildly interested in seeing it. It’s simply the faces of a man and a woman on a blue background. So far, so OK-ish – but what a way to not sell this show.

In reality, this is an absolute cracker of a performance, one that had the audience in gales of laughter, with terrific comic turns from all six leads that rightly made the whole thing a ridiculous send-up – and there’s not a hint of that in any of the bus posters covering Brisbane.

Leanne Kenneally in Opera Queensland’s Cosi fan tutte. Photo © Jade Ferguson

Ideally, Così fan tutte plays out like a rom-com. You get the usual mistaken identity, wacky hijinks, will-they-won’t-they plot points, but there’s also a fine line to walk, given that Così can easily tip over into mean-spiritedness or even outright sexism.

I’ve seen the title translated into idiomatic English before as All Women Are Like That, and the solution to this is to crank up the absurdity of it...