Two young officers, sitting in a cafe, are boasting about how faithful their respective fiancees, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, are. A friend experienced in love affairs, Don Alfonso, joins them and, faced with what he believes to be an act of extreme naivety on the part of the young men, proposes a game. They will make their girlfriends believe that they have been called off to war. Soon thereafter they will return in disguise and each attempt to seduce the other's lover. Don Alfonso assures that in less than twenty-four hours Fiordiligi and Dorabella will be seduced by the friend of their true boyfriend.
Così fan tute, opera bufa
Thus begins the first act of the comic opera Così fan Tutte, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composed in 1789 and premiered in January 1790, a year before the composer's death (although he will still have time to compose his masterpiece in the field of the opera: The Magic Flute). The work was the right one to enchant the Viennese, both the most refined and the most frivolous. For that reason, it was very well received, but unfortunately, following the death of Emperor Joseph II a month after the premiere, its performances had to be suspended. According to custom, national mourning implied the closing of all theaters.
The play managed to be performed five times and when it returned to the stage, in June of that year, other works were on the billboard and the public had already begun to forget it. During the rest of the year, the opera was performed only five times.
Maria Teresa, again
Mozart died the following year, without him ever seeing his work performed on the Vienna stage again. Maybe Leopold II ― Joseph's brother and successor ― had something to do with it. He never had a special liking for Wolfgang, probably influenced by the animosity that his late mother, Maria Teresa of Austria, had towards the family of "homeless musicians", as she once called the Mozarts.
Fortunately, Leopold left this world in 1792 ― likely poisoned ―, without ever learning that the next year some French rioters were going to cut off the head of his sister, Marie Antoinette.
Trio Soave Sia il Vento. Don Alfonso announces the bad news to the women: their lovers have been called off to war; they must leave today. The officers say goodbye, heartbroken. While watching the boat moving away with them, the girls, along with jester Alfonso, bid them farewell, wishing them safe travel: "may the wind be gentle."
Glyndebourne Festival, 2006. The girls: Fiordiligi, the Swedish soprano Miah Persson; Dorabella, the German mezzo-soprano Anke Vondung. Don Alfonso: Nicolas Rivenq.
