 
                         20060309.01

                     Cosi fan tutte (3)

     The extraordinary quality of DaPonte's libretto for Cosi
fan tutte may be attributed in part to the circumstance that
DaPonte must have been writing "in real time" about his own
amatory experience. It is not by accident that the notary's
marriage contract specifies Fiordiligi and Dorabella as
"dame ferraresi"; for DaPonte was even then writing this
libretto not only for Mozart but also for the woman who was
then his mistress, one Adriana Gabrieli, an accomplished
singer known from her birthplace as "La Ferrarese" for whom
DaPonte procured from Mozart the role of Fiordiligi, even as
DaPonte was writing the words that Adriana, La Ferrarese,
was to sing. One WWW gossip would have it that Mozart dis-
liked Adriana, and it was vindictiveness that made him write
for her that excruciatingly difficult aria:

       FIORDILIGI
       Come scoglio immoto resta
       Contro i venti e la tempesta,
       Così ognor quest'alma è forte
       Nella fede e nell'amor.

It would be difficult to imagine more conclusive evidence that
in the Cosi fan tutte libretto DaPonte was expressing his
immediate personal concerns, that, paraphrasing Goethe, he wrote
"was ihm auf den Naegeln brannte", (what was burning on the tips
of his fingers). Thus it is not at all far fetched to argue that
the Cosi fan tutte dialogue between Fiordiligi and her lover was
a spiritual if not a literal rendition of the dialogue real or
imagined, between Adriana and Lorenzo.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
