Background Notes
In 1789, Mozart appeared to be back in the game. Le nozze di Figaro had been remounted in Vienna and was a huge success, eventually achieving a total of 26 performances. Previously, the composer's fortunes at the Burgtheater were tenuous at best ? in 1786, Figaro had managed a meager nine showings (eclipsed by the premiere of the enormously popular Una cosa rara, newly offered by Vicente Martín y Soler) and two years later, his Prague-born Don Giovanni was coolly received by the Viennese. Financially speaking, neither the Figaro revival nor the Giovanni premiere meant much money ? there were no royalties back then ? but composers could make a little extra on the side by composing new arias for existing works. For Don Giovanni, Mozart replaced Don Ottavio's challenging ?Il mio tesoro? with the more facile ?Dalla sua pace? for the new Don Ottavio, Francesco Morella, and Caterina Cavalieri needed an additional piece, ?In quali eccessi?Mi tradì,? to show off her splendid technique, and to show up her rival (and Mozart's sister-in-law) Aloysia Lange, who sung Donna Anna. The same situation existed for the Figaro revival ? the newly arrived ?La Ferrarese,? Adriana del Bene (soon to become the first Fiordiligi), required two brand new arias for her role as Susanna (?Al desio, di chi t'adora? and ?Un moto di gioia?), and quite naturally, Cavalieri, as the Countess, demanded some retouching of ?Dove sono? in fear of her new competition. All of this was quite natural for the theater of the day, suiting a particular aria to a singer's special talents. In fact, Mozart was also called upon to write insertions and replacements for the Burgtheater's ever-changing troupe of singers when they performed works by other composers who were no longer in Vienna ? this was the case for Louise Villeneuve (soon to be the first Dorabella), for whom he composed ?Alma grande e nobil core? to be performed as part of Cimarosa's I due baroni, and ?Chi sà qual sia? and ?Vodo, ma dove? for a revival of Martín y Soler's Il burbero di buon cuore.
Still, the Figaro revival was important in terms of prestige. Once again, Mozart had brought himself to the attention of Emperor Joseph II, who commissioned a new work as a result. The composer turned to librettist Lorenzo da Ponte for a third time, and fortunately his erstwhile collaborator had a libretto in hand, La scuola degli amanti (The School for Lovers), which had first been offered to Antonio Salieri. There may have been some animosity between Da Ponte and Salieri, as the former had taken La Ferrarese as his lover and had unfairly promoted her interests at the Burgtheater. Salieri, quite naturally, was still romantically attached to Cavalieri. Just as much a personal jibe as theatrical favoritism, La Ferrarese would be cast in one of the principal roles.
Così fan tutte, the new opera's eventual title, remains somewhat of a mystery. There's scant written documentation as to how it came about, and Da Ponte's later memoirs betray very little. There is no direct literary source and the librettist, chided in the past for the many adaptations and translations as was required by his position at imperial poet, seemed proud to be able to offer it as an original work. Nineteenth-century critics have attributed the story of exchanged lovers to a real-life scandal that had been made public in Vienna , recent gossip known to the emperor himself, which he then encouraged for operatic treatment. Others have traced it to an event connected to the ongoing Turkish campaign, which had taken place in a city on the Adriatic coast. Two men, who claimed to have been called into active duty, successfully courted each other's wives while disguised at a masked ball. As it turns out, neither of these tidbits bears much credence.
Although we can't be certain to what degree Mozart influenced the libretto, he undoubtedly had something to do with it. And the creation of the opera had an interesting parallel to the reality of his own life at that moment. His wife Constanze was taking the cure at Baden , a spa known more for mixed bathing and flirtatious dalliances than for any actual medicinal value. Naturally, reports of his wife's improprieties (including a letter from one of her lovers) caused the composer to wave a cautionary finger, suggesting that she had been ?too free? and that ?a woman must always conduct herself with decorum lest people talk.? Infidelity was very much on his mind.
Così was written quickly, over the autumn and winter months, and premiered on January 26, 1790, on the eve of the Mozart's 34 th birthday. Critical acclaim was favorable, and the Viennese seemed to enjoy it. Four performances followed in repertory, before an unforeseen and tragic event occurred ? Joseph, who had been too ill to attend the premiere, died on February 20. As was customary, all the theaters of Vienna closed for a period of mourning. A short revival followed in the summer months, but as other projects were in the hopper, the opera achieved only five more performances. Così fan tutte was not seen again in Vienna during Mozart's lifetime.
Both composer and librettist faced uncertainty in the new regime. Da Ponte's various theatrical machinations and open affair with one of the Burgtheater's leading sopranos caused both him and his mistress to be fired (Salieri was also released as director of opera and Cavalieri likewise got the boot). Mozart tried to court favor with the new ruler, Joseph's brother Leopold, by following him to Frankfurt for his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. The composer organized concerts of his music, hoping to attract attention. But Leopold had other things on his mind, trying to repair some of the political fallout brought on by Joseph's liberal reforms. He needed to gain a firm control of his nation during dangerous times ? the French Revolution had broken out the previous year, resulting in the downfall (and later, execution) of his sister, Marie Antoinette. The new emperor did eventually get around to confirming Mozart's existing title of Kammermusicus and would also commission an opera seria, La clemenza di Tito, to celebrate another coronation in Prague, but by the summer of 1791, the composer was badly in debt and six months to his grave.
Così fan tutte quickly went to Mozart-enamored Prague for the 1990/91 season, and Frankfurt in German translation, and then to houses elsewhere in Germany . The first subsequent Italian production was in 1797 in Trieste where Del Bene would revive her role. One curious feature of Così as it traveled through the 19 th century was that the opera was frequently modified or simply set to a new libretto. The story's surface frivolity had little appeal for emergent minds of the Romantic era, and further down the road, the subject became a little too racy for Victorian audiences. Even in the cosmopolitan city of Paris, though the opera had appeared in Paris in Italian early in the century, for the more illustrious French-translation performances (generally at one of Paris' three principal venues), Mozart's music was set to an adaptation of Shakespeare's Lave Labour's Lost at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1863 by veteran librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. It's only in the 20 th century that the opera has been rehabilitated to its original state. Ranked fourth in popularity among Mozart's favored works, Così fan tutte might be considered a ?thinking person's opera,? much in the same way as Don Carlos is to Verdi's oeuvre. People in the know often regard it as their preference.
