Kaerli Cadel.

To a modern audience Cosi fan Tutti would almost be offensive.

Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte opens at San Diego Opera on Saturday, February 12, 2022, at the Civic Theatre. This is the first time SDO has performed a fully staged indoor opera since Hansel and Gretel in February of 2020. There have been outdoor performances at The Del Mar Fairgrounds and The Pechanga Sports Arena but outdoor performances of opera aren’t actually opera. Once electric amplification becomes involved, opera becomes something else. It’s not opera but at the same time, it’s also not not opera.

Cosi fan Tutte is Mozart’s full foray into the rom-com genre. It starts off, as do many rom-coms, with a bet.

Ferrando and Guglielmo are sitting in a cafe talking about how their fiancées, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, respectively, will be faithful forever. Don Alfonso expresses doubt in the faithfulness of the women. Love can be fickle and so he challenges the two gallants with a bet. He will prove in a single day that Dorabella and Fiordiligi are fickle, just like all women. This is the title of the opera. Cosi fan Tutte means, “Women are like that.”

At this point, we must wonder what woman destroyed Don Alfonso to the extent that he considers all women to be unfaithful, or perhaps we should look to Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist. Da Ponte was an Italian Jewish Catholic priest who was convicted of “public concubinage" and "abduction of a respectable woman” while living in Venice. Da Ponte was also rumored to have organized a brothel in Venice. It would appear that da Ponte was not a champion of women.

To a modern audience, Cosi fan Tutte could almost be considered offensive. The women are set up by three men and another woman, Despina. They are all but forced into being unfaithful. Yet the spirit of the piece is light-hearted and everything ends well except for the fact that men, apparently, can’t trust women to be faithful. I’d have to say the opposite is more true, far more true. Perhaps infinitely more true. Women cannot trust men to be faithful.

According to the Wikipedia page for Cosi fan Tutte, the theme of fiancée swapping goes back to the 13th Century. Elements of this theme can be found in Shakespeare and even further back in the myths of Ovid who lived and wrote during the reign of Augustus in the Roman Empire.

All misogyny aside, if that is possible, the music Mozart wrote for Cosi fan Tutte is some of the most beautiful ever to grace an opera stage. Cosi fan Tutte runs through February 20.