(Thus Do All Women, or The School for Lovers)

Text by Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838)
Opera in two acts
First performance: January 26, 1790 at the Burgtheater, Vienna

Cast, in order of appearance:
Ferrando, officer in love with Dorabella
Guglielmo, officer in love with Fiordiligi
Don Alfonso, old philosopher
Fiordiligi, woman from Ferrara living in Naples, in love with Guglielmo
Dorabella, woman from Ferrara living in Naples, in love with Ferrando
Despina, maidservant to the women

Choruses of soldiers and servants

Program Notes by Martin Pearlman

We know relatively little about the origins of Così fan tutte.  While it is unclear who commissioned it, it appears that Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto was first offered to the Vienna court composer Salieri.  However, after setting a bit of the libretto to music, Salieri declined the commission and it was offered to Mozart.  Mozart must have welcomed the commission.  He was in desperate need of money, and this was also a chance to collaborate again with Da Ponte, who had provided librettos for The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni.  The two men evidently worked quickly to finish the opera, as we can see from shorthand notations, small errors and other signs of haste in the manuscript.  Mozart mentions the pressure to finish it in one of his letter. 

On New Year's Eve of 1789 at 10:00 in the morning, he held a private rehearsal of music from the opera, to which he invited only his friends Haydn and Puchberg.  They were both invited again to the first orchestra rehearsal on January 20.  The opera opened six days later at the Burgtheater in Vienna, and, despite what Mozart described as "Salieri's cabals" against it, it appears to have been a success.  Performances were well attended, and the few comments that have come down to us were positive.  One admiring reviewer wrote, "Concerning the music: that it is by Mozart says all, I believe."  However, after only five performances, the Emperor Joseph II died and the production was halted.  There were several more performances in the summer, after which the opera was not heard again for four years. 

But despite signs of success in its initial run, the opera came in for criticism almost from the beginning.  The problem had to do not with Mozart's music but with Da Ponte's libretto, which some people found offensive and frivolous.  It is a story of two women who cannot recognize their own lovers or their own maid through thin disguises, who fall in love with and agree to marry "new" suitors almost as soon as their old ones have been called away, and who are supposed to demonstrate that women cannot be trusted.  Such an implausible story was thought to be unworthy of great music.  Years after its premiere, Mozart's widow Constanze reported that Salieri, after sketching a few uninspired musical ideas, turned down the project as being "unworthy of invention."  She added that Salieri "first tried to set this opera but failed, and the great success of Mozart in accomplishing what he could make nothing of seems to have excited his envy and hatred."  But Constanze herself had reservations about the story.  The music publisher Novello, to whom she gave this account, wrote, "She does not much admire the plot of Così fan, but agreed . . . that such music would carry any piece through." 

Unquestionably Mozart set this libretto to sublime music.  Whether he nonetheless had reservations about the story is something that we will never know, but he evidently did ask for changes in the libretto to sharpen the characterization and the humor in places.  As a result, we see differences between the libretto that Salieri tried to set and the one that Mozart actually completed.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the opera was both praised and condemned, much of the criticism directed at the way the libretto portrayed women.  In German-speaking countries, the work was often heard in new German translations with spoken dialogue that altered the story and even the cast of characters.   

But at the end of the century, in 1897, Richard Strauss conducted influential performances of Così in Munich.  That production, which used an accurate translation and respected what Strauss called "the delicate irony" of the libretto, can be said to have begun the slow rehabilitation of the opera.  By the mid-twentieth century, musicologist Alfred Einstein was to describe Così fan tutte as "iridescent, like a glorious soap-bubble...  To this, moreover, is added the color of pure beauty."  It was not until 1967 that there was a complete recording of it and not until the second half of the twentieth century that it became a staple of the operatic repertoire.

Today, of course, Così fan tutte, enjoys the same exalted status as Mozart's other late operas.  It is not hard to understand why it is so popular:  Mozart, in one of his many miracles, has imbued a rather cynical libretto with extraordinary beauty, clearly differentiating the six characters through their music and giving depth and meaning to the love, forgiveness and humor in the story.

Orchestration Chart

This chart gives an overview of the work, showing which soloists and instruments are in each movement. It has also been useful in planning rehearsals, since one can see at a glance all the music that a particular musician plays. Red X's indicate major solo moments for a singer. An X in parentheses indicates that the use of that instrument is ad libitum.

This is a preview of the beginning of the chart. You can download or view a PDF of the whole chart here.

Boston Baroque Performances

Così fan tutte

October 12 & 13, 2007
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor

Soloists:
Lauren Skuce - Fiordiligi
Jennifer Holloway - Dorabella
Vale Rideout - Ferrando
Hugh Russell - Guglielmo
Kevin Burdette - Don Alfonso
Sara Heaton - Despina

May 13 & 16, 1998
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
and
May 14, 1998
Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor

Soloists:
Judith Lovat - Fiordiligi
Theodora Hanslowe - Dorabella
James Taylor - Ferrando
Andrew Schroeder - Guglielmo
David Evitts - Don Alfonso
Kathleen Brett - Despina

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