Ryedale Festival Opera, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Experience Ensemble

La Finta Giardiniera (1775) is an opera of secrets and lies, but also of forgiveness and reconciliation. These are qualities that the young Mozart could express in music like none other.

Seven characters with complicated love lives meet an eighteen-year-old composer full of imagination and musical genius. Sandrina is a high-born girl, so why has she disguised herself as a gardener to find work in the Mayor's household?

The Mayor falls head-over-heels in love with his new 'garden girl', much to the annoyance of his servant, Serpetta, who would like to marry her rich employer. The good-natured (but poor) Nardo is waiting in the wings if she doesn't!

Meanwhile, the mayor's highly-strung niece Arminda is supposed to marry Ramiro, but only has eyes for Belfiore. He's a man with something to hide but feels a strange, inexplicable and entirely reciprocated attraction to the disguised Sandrina...