Lyric Opera 2025-2026 Issue 9 - Così fan tutte

19 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Above: In this production,Ferrando and Guglielmo make their bet,appropriately enough, in a locker room.Opposite: Despina embodies the libretto’s cynicism,as she encourages Fiordiligi and Dorabella to take advantage of their situation. “Mozart’s most problematic work.” What is the problem? In essence, it is a felt dissonance between the heartless spirit of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto and the remarkable emotional expressivity of the music, especially in the second act. This dissonance is then rendered more problematic still by the cookie-cutter ending in which everything snaps back to the way it was before Act Two. Da Ponte’s libretto is polished, well-constructed, witty — and cynical. Don Alfonso, the opera’s resident philosopher/observer/cynic, who creates the plan to test the fidelity of the young women, opines that emotions are short-lived and fickle, but the libretto ultimately goes yet further, suggesting that they are altogether unreal and factitious. Much of the work’s humor, in Act One, derives from the fact that while the women take their own emotions seriously, we are urged to see that they are only play-acting, imitating literary expressions of passion. (Singer-actresses have a challenge: while acting they must create the impression of mere play- acting, and later on show how different that is from genuine feeling.) Throughout Act One, Mozart’s music serves Da Ponte’s cynical purpose quite well, creating an artificial comedy with characters who are essentially cardboard cutouts and objects of knowing laughter (by Don Alfonso and Despina, and by us). We know very little about the nature of Mozart and Da Ponte’s collaboration, but we certainly have no evidence that, like Verdi, Mozart controlled the process and insisted on getting his way; the legendarily self-promoting Da Ponte’s letters suggest the opposite, rightly or wrongly. But Mozart cannot help taking emotions seriously, and by Act Two his genius for emotional insight, range, and particularity takes over, breaking the clever mold and subverting its purpose. In the other Da Ponte operas, it is also true that Mozart supplies emotional depth to texts that might have been set otherwise. (Just imagine, for example, in how many This is Mozart — who shows again and again that playfulness and humor can be a supreme expression of reciprocity in love. Photo by Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera