Cosi fan tutte (1790) was the third and final collaboration between librettist Lorenzo da Ponte and composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the one with the least straightforward history. Like Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and (Il) Don Giovanni (1787) it was a comic opera whose tone was wryly witty in both words and music. However, its story was not derived, as before, from a play or pre-existent opera. Rather, it was based (reputedly) on some topical Viennese incident and revelled in holding up a mirror to contemporary morals: its laconic twin titles (Cosi ... /La scuola degli amanti) mean 'This is what all women get up to [when their men are away]: or the school[ing] of lovers'.
Cosi is didactic theatre with a wink. In the decades after the premiere, when the idealization of women came to the fore, the titles were often reined in. Yet the style of the action also looked back, among other things, to Shakespeare (through its various disguises), commedia dell'arte (through the delightfully scheming maid Despina) and many other works that put female fidelity to the test. Cosi was as old as it was new.
The narrative is shaped by the need to give each of the six protagonists an aria in both acts, to pair the changing couples into duets, to enrich the whole with some larger ensembles and to allow the two act-finales to mix types freely. There are also a few choruses for soldiers, musicians and people, though, as in Figaro, an ensemble of soloists provides the final 'choric' comment. Yet it is what happens within this format that makes Cosi so special: for passion constantly entwines with artifice and commentary. For instance, within the Act 1 'departure' quintet, while the two sisters weep and the two officers feign sympathy, the manipulative 'wise old man' Don Alfonso struggles to contain his laughter. Likewise in Act 2, with the officers now in disguise, 'Ferrando' needs five distinct tempi to vanquish the resilient Fiordiligi, an effort that underscores the relative simplicity of 'Guglielmo"s earlier conquest of Dorabella. Like the words, the music has to have it all ways - and does so, with uniquely complex effect. As the critic Hans Keller argued back in 1948, 'Occasionally, I mean, Mozart only pretends to be pretending.'
Christopher Wintle Author of What Opera Means (Boydell & Brewer, 2018)
Emeritus Senior Lecturer in Music at King's College, London
