Cosi Fan Tutte K. 588

Mozart’s seven great operas, his brilliant contribution to musical theater and world culture, are unequalled in their depth of human characterization and musical expression. Here we have the original score of one of the seven great operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Così fan tutte. The full title Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti translates to “All Women Do It, or The School for Lovers” in English and the short title is usually translated as “Women are Like That”. The work was one of several collaborations between Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838), who wrote the libretto.

Risqué Themes and Personal Rivalries

Although uncontroversial among the Viennese of the late-18th century, audiences in the 19th and early-20th centuries found it to be risqué, vulgar, and even immoral and thus was performed only rarely before regaining popularity after World War II. According to one anecdote, Mozart disliked da Ponte’s arrogant mistress Adriana Ferrarese del Bene (ca. 1755 – ca. 1804), for whom the lead role of Fiordiligi had been created. Knowing her idiosyncratic tendency to drop her chin on low notes and throw back her head on high ones, Mozart filled her showpiece aria Come scoglio with constant leaps from low to high and high to low in order to make Ferrarese's head “bob like a chicken” onstage. In the space of a few months, in the autumn and winter of 1789, Mozart filled more than 650 pages with a score that shows practically no signs of mental or physical exertion, the original manuscript of which is presented here.