RENÉE’S COSÌ—AND OTHERS PART 1

MOZART’S COSÌ FAN TUTTE HAS BEEN TRANSLATED “WOMEN ARE LIKE THAT, but the famous soprano Renée Fleming is out to correct this opera’s misogynous implications. Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits about this effort, prefaced with previous musings about this opera buffo. 

Playbill of the first performance. Image from Wikipedia. 

First, The Original. Wikipedia recounts, “Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti  (Women are like that, or The School for Lovers), K. 588, is an opera buffa in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was first performed on 26 January 1790 at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Austria. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte who also wrote Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni.”

Fiancée Swapping—Yet Again. Wikipedia continues, “Mozart and 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.”

Not that I’ve read all of these.…

Image from art-glo.com.

The Plot. As SimanaitisSays recounted, “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.” 

The plot thickens [Ed: pls change to “evolves”]. “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.’ ” 

Wikipedia observes, “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 bowdlerised versions.”

These Days. As I observed, “It’s a neat, kinda corny sit-com with lovely Mozart music.” Variations have included SoCal’s Opera Pacific‘s Così, 1998, 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. 

Other variations include Pacific Opera Project‘s May 2012 Così with antebellum overtones and plenty of tongue-in-cheek Gone with the Wind, suh; POP’s open-air COVID Fan Tutte, 2020, its audience Covid-confidently parked in their cars; the Met’s Coney Island Così, 2019; and Detroit Opera’s April 2025 robotic Così when “Don Alfonso’s manipulations of the ‘emotions’ of his robotic inventions (the lovers) become an obsessive quest to develop spiritual machines.”

Tomorrow in Part 2, we learn of Renée Fleming’s directorship. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025