Fiordiligi: Tatiana Starkova
Dorabella: Irina Shishkova
Despina: Lyudmila Dudinova
Guglielmo: Sergei Romanov
Ferrando: Stanislav Leontiev
Don Alfonso: Nikolai Kamensky
World premiere: 26 January 1790, Burgtheater, Vienna
Premiere on the Russian stage: 15 November 1816, Maly Theatre, St Petersburg (performed in Russian, translated by Rafail Zotov)
Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre and premiere of this production: 9 February 2002
Running time: 3 hours 20 minutes
The performance has one interval
Così fan tutte is the third and final opera in the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart-Lorenzo Da Ponte opera trilogy. The trilogy, which also includes Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787), was not planned as such. Apparently, the play Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (Thus Do They All, or The School for Lovers) got to Mozart after Antonio Salieri rejected it. Salieri had already composed five operas based on Da Ponte’s librettos by that time.
The title was taken from Le nozze di Figaro. Count Almaviva’s discovery of Cherubino hiding in the room causes Don Basilio, Susanna and the Count to comment in a terzetto: ‘Così fan tutte le belle’ (‘All the beauties do it’). However, Don Basilio is wrong: neither Susanna, nor the Countess ‘do it.’ Basilio, an old chatterbox, is far from being the nicest character in Le nozze di Figaro. His aria about how a dead donkey’s hide can substitute all the riches in the world is not usually deemed worthy to be performed on stage by opera houses.
The plotline of Così fan tutte was invented by Da Ponte. However, there are plenty of literary works which could serve as a source of inspiration for the poet. The most ancient of such literary sources is Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, which tells the stories of the faithful Fiordelisa and the unfaithful Doralice, as well as the paladin Rinaldo, who is offered a magic drink. Whoever takes a sip of the drink finds out wherever his beloved is faithful to him. Nevertheless, Da Ponte’s work is mostly original. No libretto used by Mozart before had been criticised so harshly as was this one. The critics have always said that the libretto is too slow-paced, non-dramatic and does not compare favourably with Beaumarchais’ comedy about Figaro.
Even if the libretto had its weak spots, Mozart’s contemporaries chose to ignore them. The premiere held on 26 January 1790 at the Burgtheater in Vienna was a great success for Mozart. This time around the Viennese public was quick to appreciate the new opera. The highlight of the first performances was that the roles of two schemers – Despina and Don Alfonso – were sung by husband and wife Dorotea and Francesco Bussani.
No one ever doubted the strengths of Mozart’s score. The least original of all the opera’s music themes seems to reiterate its main idea: thus they all do…The theme can be twice heard loud and triumphant in the overture (at the end of the opening part and Presto) and returns in the second act, when Guglielmo and Ferrando agree with Don Alfonso and repeat his conclusion. Mozart also reiterated the main idea of Don Giovanni in the music theme which can be heard in the opera’s overture and is repeated in the finale. That is the theme of Commendatore’s vengeance and the adulterer’s path to hell. Così fan tutte has its own hell – the experience of unfaithfulness, which the young characters gained under the guidance of cynical Alfonso, as well as unavoidable doubts accompanying such an experience.
Mozart used not-so-original music themes several more times in the opera. It can be linked to a device so common for an opera buffa – use of disguise. Despina pretends to be a doctor at the end of act I. She is so convincing that nobody recognises her. Despina also changes the timbre of her voice and melodic style so that she would sound differently from her two previous arias. Despina also manages to successfully pose as a notary at the end of the second act.
Fiordiligi’s plan to change into a man’s dress and to follow her beloved is not reflected in the music (the character explains it in a recitativo). Nothing resembling an oriental theme can be heard in the sextet music of act I, when Guglielmo and Ferrando enter wearing their Albanian costumes. It is not surprising that Despina is at a loss and cannot decide whether those two are Turks or Wallachs. Lorenzo Da Ponte seemed to think that Albanian costumes would make the young men irresistible. Not only Da Ponte thought of the costumes as being a lady magnet. Many years later, Mavrogheni, a Greek from Konstantin Leontiev’s A Husband’s Confession, appears wearing an Albanian costume to the same effect. However, Mozart decided against using some Janissaries-like motives (Albania was a part of the Ottoman Empire at the time), although it would have been easy for the composer of Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
Since the opera houses have introduced supertitles and it has become easier to follow the story for the audiences, Così fan tutte has been much less criticised for slow-paced story development. Evidently, Mozart did not consider Da Ponte’s libretto boring. The overture sets the tone for an action-packed story, so much so that it can be called restless. There are 17 (!) ensembles for 12 arias, from the most monumental to the smallest. While it is difficult to choose the best scenes, worth mentioning are such masterpieces of bel canto as Ferrando’s sweetest aria in act I and Fiordiligi’s heroic rondo in act II, where the singer’s voice is challenged by two French horns. The plethora of ensembles in the first act includes a ‘farewell’ quintet, which the lovers sing while seemingly swallowing their tears, as well as the terzettino of Fiordiligi, Dorabella, and Don Alfonso (which is performed after Guglielmo and Ferrando seemingly go to war), when the orchestra creates a music impression of the surge of the sea. In act II, as the characters get more entangled in the plot, the music becomes even more beautiful, from Guglielmo and Ferrando’s duet with chorus to the opera finale, where the four lovers are balancing on the verge of a catastrophe with their hearts aflutter.
… Paladin Rinaldo in Orlando furioso refuses to take part in the fidelity test after some deliberation. Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera once again confirms that he was right to do so. Anna Bulycheva
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