COSÌ TIMES HAD BY ALL

MOZART’S OPERA COSÌ FAN TUTTE HAS ENTERTAINED even with controversy of its title: The best English rendering is “Women Are Like That,” which has been interpreted as a misogynistic view of their gender. Misogyny, says Merriam-Webster, is “hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women,” from the Greek μισώ, misó, “hate,” and γυναίκες, gynaíkes, “women.”

What’s So Misogynous About Così? Two guys, Ferrando and Guglielmo, claim their respective fiancées Dorabella and Fiordiligi will be eternally faithful. However, their pal Don Alfonso is skeptical and says there’s no such thing as a faithful woman. 

Their discussion degenerates into a wager: The two guys pretend they’re called off to war, but immediately return disguised as Albanians, each attempting to seduce the other’s lover.

What with one thing and another, together with the charming intrigue of the girls’ maid Despina, each “Albanian” is eventually successful in arranging a double wedding with faux grooms. At the last moment, the twosomes are realigned into original form and everyone “praises the ability to accept life’s unavoidable good times and bad times.”

Geez, who says opera ain’t relevant in today’s times.

It’s a neat, kinda corny sit-com with lovely Mozart music.

A playbill of the first performance: “Women are like that, or The School for Lovers.” January 26, 1790, Burgtheater, Vienna. Image from Wikipedia.

An Oft-Told Tale. As noted by Wikipedia, Mozart and [librettist] Da Ponte use the theme of ‘fiancée swapping,’ which dates back to the 13th century; notable earlier versions are found in Boccaccio‘s Decameron and Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline. Elements from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew are also present. Furthermore, it incorporates elements of the myth of Procris as found in Ovid‘s Metamorphoses, vii.”

A Mozart Così Back Story. Wikipedia recounts, “According to William Mann, Mozart disliked prima donna Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, da Ponte’s arrogant mistress for whom the 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.”

Ha. Si non e vero, e ben trovato.

Cultural Sensibilities. Wikipedia continues, “The subject matter did not offend Viennese sensibilities of the time, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries was considered risqué, vulgar, and even immoral. The opera was rarely performed, and when it did appear it was presented in one of several Bowdlerized versions.”

More Recent Così Interpretations. Back in 1998, SoCal’s Opera Pacific set Così in a traditionally costumed setting: I recall the guys’ poking fun at their Albanian army “kilts,” and the gals’ scenery-chewing humor. An entertaining traditional Così.

As noted in “Riding the Razor Edge” a year ago in SimanaitisSays, Così also “had a 2019-2020 Met production transformed to New York City’s Coney Island in the 1950s, complete with actual sideshow performers.” It was good fun as well. 

Scenes from the Met’s Coney Island Cosi. Images by Marty Suhl/The Metropolitan Opera.

My favorite local opera, Pacific Opera Project, set its May 2012 production of Così with antebellum overtones and plenty of tongue-in-cheek Gone with the Wind, suh. 

POP’s Drive-in COVID Così. During the height of Covid in November 2020, POP’s COVID Fan Tutte was presented as a Covid-confident in-your-car drive-in venue in the parking lot of Camarillo United Methodist Church. This Così’s imagined setting was Popwood Country Club golf resort with a “new English Libretto by [POP’s Founding Artistic Director and CEO] Josh Shaw with suggested (but mostly ignored) edits by [bass-baritone] E. Scott Levin based on the original libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte.”  

It’s available for streaming, even to car horn toots of appreciation at the end.

April in Detroit. Another of my favorite opera companies, Detroit Opera, has a Così dwelling in an ultra-modern setting devised by Artistic Director Yuval Sharon: “Don Alfonso’s manipulations of the ‘emotions’ of his robotic inventions (the lovers) become an obsessive quest to develop spiritual machines.”

Image from Detroit Opera. 

Schedules for April 5, 11, and 13, 2025, this Così asks, “Will his laboratory of lovers lead to a breakthrough for ‘Humanity 2.0,’ or are human habits of jealousy and deceit hardwired into us?”

Or can we blame A.I. hallucinations? 

All in good sorta misogynist fun. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025