Facts about Così fan tutte
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Così fan tutte is the third and final opera he wrote in collaboration with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, completing their celebrated trilogy.
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Ferruccio Busoni's 1913 arrangement of Così fan tutte for two pianos reduced Mozart's full orchestration to keyboard performance, becoming influential for concert halls lacking complete opera orchestras.
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In 1858, the composer Daniel-François Esprit Auber created a parody version of Così fan tutte called Les Brham, adapting Mozart's plot for contemporary French audiences.
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Così fan tutte remained largely absent from major opera house repertoires for nearly 150 years after Mozart's death, dismissed by 19th-century critics as immoral due to its plot about female infidelity.
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Despina, the maid character in Così fan tutte, appears in all but one scene of the opera and delivers more lines than either of the two male tenor roles combined.
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Fiordiligi's aria 'Come scoglio' requires a soprano to sustain a high F for approximately 4 bars while delivering one of opera's most notoriously difficult coloratura passages.
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Six principal characters in Così fan tutte are soprano or mezzo-soprano voices, with only two tenor roles, creating an unusually female-heavy vocal distribution for Mozart's operatic works.
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At least 3 major orchestras have recorded Così fan tutte over 50 times since its premiere, making it one of Mozart's most frequently performed operas worldwide.
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The libretto for Così fan tutte was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte, who also collaborated with Mozart on Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro.
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Mozart composed Così fan tutte in just six weeks during 1789, completing the opera in Vienna for its January 1790 premiere at the Burgtheater.