Mozart's Felix Culpa

Mozart's "felix culpa: Così fan tutte" and the Irony of Beauty
Author(s): Scott Burnham

Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 77-98
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/742494
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Mozart's felix culpa: Cosi fan tutte
and the Irony of Beauty
Scott Burnham
Never has an opera drawn attention to itself in quite the same way as
Mozart's Cosi fan tutte: La scuola degli amanti. Its critical reception has
been marked by ambivalence from its premiere to the present day. For
if the music of Cosi seems unarguably sumptuous, Beethoven's well-
known injunction against the perceived triviality of the libretto has
rarely been overcome. 1 In the nineteenth century this attitude
reached an extreme; various drastic and now infamous revisions were
foisted upon the opera, retaining the music while changing some of
the words or even the entire story.2 Concern about the fit of music
and libretto continues to be reflected in some of the most important
criticism of Cosi in our own century. While no one in this age of the
sacrosanct text would go so far as to suggest altering the libretto, criti-
cal ambivalence lingers in attempts to account for the perceived dis-
junction of music and words. Still at question is the specific effect of
setting what is heard as incomparably beautiful music to this particular
libretto. Thus, Hermann Abert sees the opera as the ascent of satire
to irony, the humanization of Italian opera buffa.3 Wolfgang Hildes-
heimer detects a kind of superior parody, a "parody as discipline,"
in the fact that Mozart portrays feigned emotions with such genuine
expression.4 And Joseph Kerman claims that Mozart's music makes
clear that the central issue in the opera is not Alfonso's demonstration
of the predictability of human nature but rather the mystery of human
feeling.5
These views all imply that Mozart's music operates at some dis-
tance from the libretto.6 For Abert and Hildesheimer, the music recu-
perates the libretto even while standing apart from it, either by
humanizing it, or by making its parodistic intent even more pointed
(diabolically so, as we will see below). In Kerman's view, the music
puts itself at odds with the cynicism of Da Ponte's libretto "and so
spoils his immaculate play."'7 The disparity between music and libretto
turns largely on the perception that the music seems to become even
77
78 The Musical Quarterly
more ravishing and heartfelt at those points in the opera where the
basest sort of deception is practiced: where we might expect bald com-
edy, the music falls like a scrim of melancholy beauty over the often
preposterous action. It is in fact this atmosphere that constitutes the
peculiar fascination of this opera and that can even be heard as some-
thing like the opera's consciousness of itself; its most characteristic
expression is found in key areas some remove from C (as in the E-
major trio or the A-flat major canon of the finale of act 2, or, closer
to C, in the serenade in E-flat or the love music in A major).8
What role is the music playing here? In what follows, I will
suggest that the music acts as a locus for an alternative point of view
to that essayed in the libretto's story, thus acting as a powerful cri-
tique of Enlightenment notions of reason and human nature, and,
further, that the juxtaposition of libretto and music ultimately implies
no less a theme than the birth of consciousness and the fall of Man.
We may begin by eavesdropping on a famous conversation, from

E. T. A. Hoffmann's "The Poet and the Composer":
Ferdinand: But can music be expected to express comedy in all its

nuances?
Ludwig: I am absolutely convinced it can, and artists of genius have

proved it a hundred times. Music can convey, for example, an impres-
sion of the most delicious irony, such as that pervading Mozart's splen-
did opera Cosi fan tutte.
Ferdinand: The thought now strikes me that, according to your prin-

ciple, the despised libretto of that opera is in fact truly operatic.9
With these words Hoffmann may have been the first important critic
to acknowledge the operatic potential of Da Ponte's libretto, but he
is no longer the last. Yet recent apologists for the libretto seem less
interested in the libretto's invitation to irony, stressing instead the
felicities of its "too nearly perfect" construction. 10 The lack of psycho-
logical realism in the story itself is felt to be counteracted by the musi-
cal permutations of its characters.11 There is no arguing with this
aspect of the libretto: to the conventional group of two pairs of lovers
Da Ponte adds two buffa characters and in so doing opens up a myriad
of musical combinational possibilities, which are thoroughly explored
by Mozart. Indeed, this work has the most ensembles of any Mozart
opera.12
Mozart's felix culpa 79
Hoffmann, however, was presumably reacting to the almost exag-

gerated levels of dramatic irony that abound in Cosi, irony directly
attributable to the libretto. To begin with, each character-or pair of
characters in the case of the lovers-has a different impression of what
is real and what is feigned, leading to an ever present and complexly
textured irony that shifts subtly with every exit and entrance.
Throughout the play within the play, but especially in the finale of
the first act, the men in particular find themselves devilishly tickled
by the irony of their predicament: they are honor bound to act out
their farce as convincingly as possible, and derive no little enjoyment
from their success in so doing ("Un quadretto pihi giocondo non s'"
visto in questo mondo"). At the same time, they begin to apprehend
the outcome of their success ("Ne vorrei che tanto foco terminasse in
quel d'amor."). Finally, the entire play operates at a constant and
overriding level of dramatic irony. As Charles Rosen has observed, Da
Ponte's libretto fits into a tradition of eighteenth-century demonstra-
tion plays. These plays were intended to expose some aspect of human
nature by engaging in an "experiment" within a closed environment.
The conclusion is known in advance; the interest lies in the psycho-
logical steps that lead to it.13 Thus, Da Ponte's story not only pro-
vides for many situations that are dramatically ironic among the
people on the stage (truth for some characters is deception for others),
but the whole unfolding story is dramatically ironic for Alfonso and,
by extension, the audience.
But apart from providing Mozart with the occasion for "delicious
irony" and with a suggestive array of shifting ensembles, the nature of
Da Ponte's story allows Mozart to explore the paradoxical relationship
of truth and illusion as it obtains in art and in human consciousness.
This most characteristic and puzzling aspect of Cosi fan tutte is epito-
mized in the two scenes we will now examine: the feigned farewell in
the first act and the seduction duet sung by Ferrando and Fiordiligi
near the end of the second act.
(Access to a score, either vocal or orchestral, will facilitate a
better understanding of the following discussion.)
When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!

-A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3.2
The several numbers constituting the farewell scene of the first

act convey pointedly the unsettling relationship of truth and illusion
in this opera. As the action and music progress from the E-flat major
quintet to the E-major trio, this relationship deepens into paradox.
The scene is announced by Don Alfonso's halting F-minor arioso (no.

5), in which he apprises the women of the calamity concerning their
lovers. This calamity is, of course, nothing other than the men's pre-
tended call to military duty, leaving their immediate futures uncertain
in the eyes of their brides to be. Don Alfonso's entrance thus marks
the first stage of the play within the play. The next five numbers form
an extended farewell scene consisting of a quintet, duettino, chorus,
another quintet followed by chorus, and the E-major terzettino.
The quintet no. 6 presents the men and women together for the
first time, accompanied by Don Alfonso. The key of E-flat major and
its opening triadic statement lend a degree of solemnity as the men
profess their inability to express just how terrible they feel about their
imminent departure. Answering in the dominant, the women cleave
closely to one another in a texture consisting mainly of parallel thirds.
They react in an exaggerated manner, asking the men to plunge
knives into their bosoms, a melodramatic touch that is noted in the
music by the brief assumption of B-flat minor. Soon the women are
calling for death rather than the sorrow of parting, in a series of rising
statements over an agitated string texture and a pedal point on B-flat.
This display strengthens the men's confidence in the fidelity of their
lovers, but when they say, "See, I told you so," to Don Alfonso, he
quietly urges them to be patient and wait for the end result of their
ruse (mm. 40-46). His smiling admonishment singlehandedly brings
the music back to E-flat major. There follows one of Mozart's great
sotto voce passages, which, as in other examples of this kind, is suf-
fused with a sense of awe with what has transpired. And, indeed, the
text invokes the destructive presence of Fate. This passage is followed
by a return of the B-flat pedal point section and the agitated outcries
of the women, whereupon Don Alfonso again brings everyone back to
E-flat, and the sotto voce passage is recapitulated. The quintet closes
with a peroration that consists largely of the interaction of Ferrando's
musical line with that of the women, providing the first evidence that
Ferrando is somewhat more sympathetic musically with them than is
Guglielmo, who often pairs with Don Alfonso in like situations.
The emotion expressed in this quintet is only incipient and is
primarily characterized by the assumption of conventional, exaggerated
responses. The sotto voce sections bring the participants somewhat
out of their conventionalized behavior into something more humanly
emotional. As Abert notes, however, Mozart brings us to the thresh-
old of emotional involvement (Rahrung) here but does not let us step
over it.14 Don Alfonso holds the entire quintet in equilibrium with
his cool, admonitory tone and his musical role of bringing back the
tonic. He is truly in charge at the moment.
Ferrando and Guglielmo's duettino no. 7 then follows, a short

piece sung mostly in thirds wherein the men adopt a rather mechani-
cal attitude of hope for a happy reunion. (Many productions of Cosi
have seen fit to drop this little number, which is'probably a tacit
acknowledgment of its failure to sustain the burgeoning emotional
tone of the pieces surrounding it [no. 6 and no. 9 in particular], but
which may also simply reflect the desire to trim the least indispensable
numbers of a long opera. 15) The chorus enters next and sings a
humorous encomium of military life, complete with battleground
sound effects. Its presence on the stage provides a visible spur of
urgency to the men's farewell, encouraging them to get on with it.
The F-major quintet no. 9 presents the actual farewell scene, and
it deepens considerably the emotional situation that we left in the no.
6 quintet. Formally, no. 9 is a kind of rounded binary, the first sec-
tion consisting harmonically of the simple succession of tonic and
dominant, the second section of a much more venturesome harmonic
traversal of F major followed by a return of some of the first section.
The opening of the quintet presents the women sobbingly reminding
the men to write to them every day. A note of suppression is inherent
in the accompaniment, with its stubborn insistence on C, the fifth
degree of F, as the upper limit of the melodic and harmonic motion.
The static repetition of this note enforces the feeling of the sob-
suppressed vocal lines. The music simply cannot rise from that C, but
must run a somber treadmill until the singers have mastered their
sobs. 16 Two measures before the end of the first section, Don Alfonso
adds his ironic aside, "lo crepo se non rido." He appropriates the only
part of this particular musical texture that could accommodate a
remark in that spirit-the bass line. We suddenly become more aware
of that bass line and its carousel-like iterations. In singing along with
the bass line, Don Alfonso points out the dramatic irony that literally
lies at the bottom of this musical texture; he draws attention to an
aspect of the musical machinery of the passage, as if revealing the
motorized works propelling the puppets around on the stage above.
But Don Alfonso's note of irony is stayed, for in m. 7 a remark-
able metamorphosis takes place. Several things happen together here:
the women abandon their sobbing eighth notes and start singing real
lines, Fiordiligi initiating this new tack with a much awaited leap from
C to F; the first violins, acknowledging Fiordiligi's venture, also break
away from that static C (it is as if the strength to pull away from the
gravity of that C was needed before anything truly musical could hap-
pen); and the harmonic progression leaves its tonic and dominant and
indulges in a suave perusal of some more outlying harmonies. The
women's two lines actually merge and form one line, which descends
from F2 to Al. They ask the men to stay faithful to them, a not
untraditional concern of women whose lovers are off to the wars. The
men, however, respond with a simple "Addio," in a set of octave
leaps followed by falling thirds, connected by a common pitch, Dl
(although separated by two beats). Again, an F is emphasized as the
starting point of a descent, an upper boundary. The women respond
together with their own "Addio," in which Fiordiligi, through a
neighbor figure, regains the F2, now harmonized deceptively by vi. In
m. 15 the four lovers sing together over an extended V six-five/V
with the F2 on top, yet another harmonization of the F. When
Fiordiligi works up chromatically to G2 in m. 16, we feel just how
great a distance that whole step has become because of the previous
near-inviolability of F as an upper boundary. The text at this point is
"Mi si divide il cor"; Fiordiligi's move to G2 truly seems a stretch, if
not a division, of the heart. The four-part vocal texture works down
to Fl and a cadence in m. 19--again deceptive and allowing a more
florid repetition of mm. 15-19--and then cadences authentically in
m. 23. In this section of the quintet the music swells with emotion;
the puppets of the first few measures have assumed a quite palpable
humanity.
What follows is the brief return of the opening music, in which
the lovers sing a series of "Addios," while Don Alfonso again rides
the bass line with his cynical aside. The tonic-dominant carousel
brings Fiordiligi around to the F2 three more times, but her ride ends,
significantly enough, back on C. She never did attain that high F in
any musically convincing way after all--it was either the start of a
descent (m. 7), the upper goal tone of a deceptive cadence (m. 14),
the unstable seventh of a V six-five/V chord which miraculously
pulls up to g (mm. 16 and 20), resolving to e a measure later, or here,
in the final section, an untenable upper limit that is denied by the
strings and pulled down to its initial level on C. Fiordiligi's attempts
to reach a "true" F, to break conclusively with her puppet-string C,
form the record of a decidedly human struggle.
The piece as a whole offers an interesting chapter in our con-
tinuing farewell scene, for here Don Alfonso's role is reversed from
that of the no. 6 quintet. During the middle section of no. 9, in
which a sudden lyricism takes flight from the sobbing merry-go-round
of the first section, Don Alfonso's voice is silenced. He does not, as
in no. 6, propel the music back to tonic. He is reduced in no. 9 to
restricting his asides to those parts of the music that simplistically
reiterate the tonic and dominant harmonies. As soon as the music,
in an implied increase of humanity, moves beyond the puppet-like
prologue and identifies with the emotions of a real parting, the voice
of dramatic irony is temporarily suspended. The return to the opening
music is a shocking reminder that the whole piece is based on but a
feigned parting after all.
After this quintet, the men get into the departing boats and the
military chorus is repeated. The two women and Don Alfonso stay
behind and sing a traveler's benediction for their departing friends.
This piece, the terzettino no. 10 in E major, is one of the most touch-
ingly beautiful numbers in all of opera and is a crux for this opera.
There is no clue, within the bounds of this number, that we are deal-
ing with anything but a real situation, a real parting and its concomi-
tant sorrows and hopes. More than that, the scene becomes emble-
matic of all real partings, for the sotto voce character of the whole is
not only reminiscent of some of the great sorpresa scenes from ensem-
bles in Figaro and Don Giovanni, but also reaches almost beyond emo-
tion, suspending the characters in a timelessly symbolic moment in
which destiny and human emotion, the sublime and the pathetic,
seem to merge. Mozart's subtle tone painting is at the heart of this
magic; the subdued wavelet figures of the muted violins, lending musi-
cal support to the textually expressed wish for smooth winds and tran-
quil seas, provide the type of stylized concretion so essential to the
creation of an artistic symbol. These gentle waves seem to lap at our
souls from some great communal sea of human sorrow and hope. Don
Alfonso, far from undermining the music, as was his wont in no. 6
and no. 9, is now caught up, seemingly, in the very sentiments he
was previously so keen to mock. After the pedal point on B of mm.
22-27, he now marks the return to tonic with a rhapsodic decoration
of the tonic triad, indicating not its banality, as he did in no. 9, but
its expressive potential.
The harsh light of reality floods the stage immediately after this
piece, however. Don Alfonso, who seemed so caught up in the trio,
now compliments himself for his acting talents and proceeds to offer
his own wind-and-water piece, a considerably gustier version that
compares trusting a woman's heart to plowing the sea, strewing seeds
in sand, and trying to catch the wind in nets. This "last word" ends
the scene and once again brings the audience back to the uncomfort-
able realization that what they just saw was a feint.
The whole farewell scene as I have described it shows a remark-
able progression in terms both of the emotions of the lovers as well as
of the ironic observations of Don Alfonso. The conventionalized out-
bursts of sorrow in no. 6, mixed with the hint of something more
heartfelt, progress to the constrained lyricism of no. 9, which, for
some moments, truly expresses an emotional content. This in turn

moves to no. 10, wherein an emotion is captured and sustained
throughout the entire piece. Correspondingly, the level of Don Alfon-
so's undermining irony is reduced through the course of the three
pieces from a controlling force in no. 6 to that exercised by an inside
commentator in no. 9 and, finally, to nothing, such that he even
seems to convert to the other side in no. 10. There, Alfonso can only
play the role of the outside commentator, one who must exercise his
irony outside the bounds of the piece.
In spite of the interjections of Don Alfonso, the music of this
whole scene seems over qualified for the task allotted it by the
libretto. It does its job too well. Consequently, Mozart's music effects
a paradoxical transformation of illusion into truth, a transformation
that is gradually achieved with unsurpassble artistry only to be ban-
ished ignobly with the Mephistophelian explosion of Don Alfonso's
parting shot. Truth indeed kills truth, but which truth remains in this
"devilish-holy fray," Alfonso's or Mozart's? And we are tempted as
well to ask, who is laughing at whom here? Is Mozart laughing at his
characters by taunting their puppet existence with glimpses of human-
ity? Is he laughing at us by taking us in with his sublime feigning? Is
he laughing at himself by illustrating that even music that is in the
service of deception can be truly sublime?
The only conclusion we can reach is that it is indeed Mozart
who is doing the laughing. Or is he? Could he be identifying seri-
ously with these puppets? In response to such questions, we may
well respond, with Charles Rosen, that "even to ask is to miss the
point. . . . The art in these matters is to tell one's story without being
foolishly taken in by it and yet without a trace of disdain for its appar-
ent simplicity. It is an art which can become profound only when the
attitude of superiority never implies withdrawal, when objectivity
and acceptance are indistinguishable."17 Later, I will attempt to com-
plement and complete this observation by showing how such an art
is indeed profound; for now, let Rosen's admonition stand in the
manner of a half-cadence, setting a provisional close to our present
questioning.
Audrey: I do not know what 'poetical' is: is it honest in word and deed?
Is it a true thing?
Touchstone: No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning; and
lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry, may be said,
as lovers, they do feign.
As You Like It, 3.3
If the farewell scene first reveals this opera's tendency to hover ambig-
uously between truth and illusion-and between emotional proximity
and ironic distance--the second-act seduction duet (no. 29) featuring
Ferrando and Fiordiligi brings this fundamental ambiguity to a shatter-
ingly personal impasse. The stage has been set for this duet by the
following contingencies: Dorabella has already fallen, shifting dramatic
weight onto Fiordiligi's continuing resistance to Ferrando. Thus, Fer-
rando is now doubly motivated to complete the seduction in order to
wreak revenge on Guglielmo, who can barely restrain his beaming
complacency long enough to sympathize with his deceived friend. In
addition, we have become gradually aware of musical and emotional
attributes shared by Ferrando and Fiordiligi; both have been profiled
throughout the opera as being more lyrical and more emotionally
nuanced than Guglielmo and Dorabella. These qualities are abun-
dantly present in their respective solos preceding the duet: the near
tragic pathos of Fiordiligi's E-major aria, "Per pieta" (no. 25), is
matched by Ferrando's highly charged aria, "Tradito, schernito" (no.
27); both numbers represent a departure from the prevailing buffa
character of the surrounding arias and both evince a reserve of intro-
spective depth. 18 One of the oft-noted levels of irony in this opera is
the more than likely supposition that the new couples are better suited
for each other than were the old; our growing awareness of this con-
trary compatibility adds a special tension to the duet.
Immediately prior to the duet, Fiordiligi expresses the rather
desperate intention to run off to the battlefield, along with Dorabella,
in their lovers' military uniforms (Ferrando's uniform fits Fiordiligi
better than Guglielmo's, as we would expect by now). In this guise (or
at least with Ferrando's hat on), Fiordiligi commences the duet, sing-
ing resolutely in A major of how she will brave the battlefield. She
shifts into a more lively tune when she imagines how her lover's heart
will swell with joy. As her phrase cadences in E major at m. 15, Fer-
rando enters melodramatically in E minor, saying that he will soon die
if she leaves. Fiordiligi turns his short-lived E minor toward C major
with the words "Cosa veggio, son tradita," initiated on a surprise F
natural in m. 21. This ushers in an allegro consisting of alternate
statements of the two protagonists. Ferrando cuts Fiordiligi's first
phrase short, in which she demands that he leave, by repeating her
melodic line and continuing on with a slowly rising phrase that peaks
on Al at m. 35. This line matches his rising emotion as he draws his
sword and asks her to do him in with it (somewhat more convincingly
than when the women asked for the same favor in no. 6). Fiordiligi
silences him and begins a series of quicker two-measure alternations,

eventually coalescing into the parallel sixths of mm. 51-57.
The melodic peaks of both vocal parts, in the section from mm.
21-57, start to indicate the progress of this battle. Fiordiligi's move
from F2 in m. 21 to G2 in m. 23 expresses her indignation, which
is more or less further sustained by her F2 in m. 25, when she com-
mands Ferrando to leave. He appropriates this F (down an octave but
supported instrumentally in her register) and slowly raises it to his Al
in m. 35. Her response, "Taci," fails to match his A and already hints
at a note of surrender: now, instead of leaving, Ferrando should just
be quiet. 19 Poor Fiordiligi can not even sustain the G2 of m. 39 but,
in the exchanges that follow, assumes the position of disadvantage,
such that the crests of her melodic lines always fall on the dominant
chord and are limited to its seventh, F, while Ferrando's crests reach
the G of the underlying tonic chord. In mm. 53-54, Fiordiligi labors
even to get to that F, approaching it by step rather than the skips of
mm. 40-50. It is no coincidence that she sings of the incipient vacil-
lation of her fidelity.
In m. 57 a new series of exchanges is initiated along with a mod-
ulation to A minor, and the temporary triumph of Ferrando is put
into question. But not for long. This new dialogue shows even more
pointedly the impending fall of Fiordiligi. As Ferrando matches
Fiordiligi's E of m. 57 with his own in m. 58, she ascends to a G in
m. 62, asking him what it is he wants from her. His response, "Your
heart or my death," carries him to a sustained high A in m. 64.
Fiordiligi's G of m. 62, as a seventh in the chord V six-five/iv,
resolves belatedly to F in m. 65, matching Ferrando's F in the same
measure. There was never any question of her singing an A. Mm.
65-69 present the sorry spectacle of Fiordiligi running back and forth
fretfully between F2 and G-sharpl, limits leapingly prescribed by Fer-
rando's words "Cedi, cara." Musically speaking, she is quite literally in
his grips by now, and far be it from mere coincidence to supply the
dramatic indication, at just this point in the action, that instructs
Ferrando to take her hand and kiss it! In m. 70, Fiordiligi breaks out
of her moth-like entrapment with the words "Dei consiglio" and a
resolution of her F's onto an E. A series of one-measure exchanges
follows, in which Fiordiligi turns Ferrando's last two notes around-
first, in mm. 70-72, he inverts his C-B to B-C; next, in mm. 72-
75, she does the same to his E-D-sharp. Her expressed vacillation is
mirrored by her inability to escape from his pitch constellations while
not acquiescing completely to their exact configurations. Fiordiligi's
high A in m. 74 is a last pathetic bit of defiance. This is all that
remains of the A she might have attained earlier, where she could
have aggressively matched the A's of Ferrando. Now, in its pitiful
isolation, her high A is but the semblance of defiance, ironic in that
it arrives only when it is much too late. Fiordiligi's use of this high A
is like a contrary-to-fact condition expressed in the subjunctive mood:
"Were I to defy you, I would sing this A."
But the seduction is still not complete. At m. 76, a larghetto in
A major commences, announced by the augmented-sixth arrival on V
in mm. 74-75. Here, Ferrando can again sing in Mozart's key of love,
as he did in "Un' aura amorosa," only now he appears to be singing
within the erotic penumbra of earthly love rather than about the oth-
erworldly atmospherics of ideal love.20 His melodic line, after its ser-
pentine course in mm. 76-83, continues with a series of upward
swells, first in skips of a third (G-sharp-B, B-D), then in diatonic
steps (D-E-F-sharp-G-sharp-A), then chromatically (E-E-sharp-F-
sharp), and finally in diatonic steps (A-B-C-sharp). There is no
strong cadence anywhere in these sixteen measures, as the cadence in
m. 79 falls on the second beat and the cadence in m. 91 is retarded
melodically. After Ferrando's elegantly sensuous pleas, a trembling
Fiordiligi can only repeat the phrase "giusto ciel" three times. These
repetitions are melodically governed by Ferrando's "sposo" and
"amante" phrases, in a dialogue pulverized into short imitative phrases
one beat apart. At m. 93 Ferrando forces Fiordiligi up in register from
E to F-sharp. When he sings his G natural in m. 94, however, she
finds the energy for an octave leap up to an indignant A2, on the
word "crudel." After her preceding helpless imitations, this A2 is like
a last memory of her former will to remain defiant, more a reflex than
a spur to further action. And, indeed, the harmony changes under-
neath her (the floor slides out from under her), as we hear the same
harmony of her last A2 in m. 74 (the "subjunctive" A). Her A thus
changes its meaning, and the futility of her gesture is given musical
corroboration.
After this climactic last stand, Fiordiligi eases into the cadence
at m. 101, first through a lesser leap from Al to F-sharp 2, and then
by a stepwise ascent to E2, from which she drops to Al, defeated.
The four measures from 97-100 harmonically prolong the dominant
through the use of a bewitching diminished seventh chord (vii7/V)
and a I six-four chord. At the harmonic arrival on V in m. 97, which
is reminiscent of the similar arrival in m. 75, the oboe commences a
leisurely melodic arch, traveling from E2 through A2 and down to Al
in m. 101. This line both reminisces on Ferrando's swells of mm.
86-89 and recapitulates the melodic arch made by the entire section
from Fiordiligi's entrance in m. 91 to the andante at m. 101. But it

also unites the last utterances of both Ferrando and Fiordiligi (from
mm. 97-101), making a composite line of their individualities-as if
Love's own voice were offering comment on the sweet progress of its
charges.
It will be remembered that the larghetto has had no strong
cadence on A major. This event was evidently held in reserve until
the seduction was complete. And not only does the last section, mm.
91-101, present an extended drive to the cadence on A major, but
the entire duet, from the C-major section on, can be felt to pull grad-
ually toward A major (C major to A minor to A major). The cadence
at m. 101 is the goal of a three-stage seduction process in which musi-
cal prolongation mirrors the prolonged but futile defense of Fiordiligi.
There is no avoiding the eventual cadence in the happily fatal key of
A major.
Reviewing the progress of the entire duet, we see that Mozart
chooses to portray an extended and psychologically complicated inter-
action.21 This is not the way to show us that human nature is a
mechanically predictable affair, a moral that, at first blush, seems to
be central to the story of this opera. Instead, Mozart presents an
intensely human dramatic situation, in which depth of character is
pitted against a strong emotional force, namely love. And we are
led once more to the paradoxical heartland of this opera. For what
appears to be the triumph of love is but the culminating stage of an
extended ruse; soon the new couples, whose love history has been
revealed to us at such length, will go back to their original pairings.
It would seem that the large quantity of beautiful music expended on
the wrong story is a diabolical celebration of the baseness of human
nature (deceit made beautiful), for no such quantity is allotted to the
real story (the original pairs and their reconciliation). Beauty seems to
countenance deceit, or, more strongly, to be the very countenance of
deceit. The time-honoured equation of truth and beauty has broad-
ened, if not sundered, itself, and that of beauty and illusion is now
ascendant.
Ferrando: "Cessate di scherzar, o giuro al cielo . . ."

Don Alfonso: "Ed io, giuro alla terra . . ."
Cosi fan tutte, 1.1
Hildesheimer contemplates the issue of beauty and illusion in Cosi fan

tutte within the framework of a boldly speculative interpretation. As a
starting point for his meditations, Hildesheimer addresses the emo-
tional ambience of Cosi and senses a pervasive yet covert melan-

choly.22 He locates the source of this melancholy in the victory of
rationalism over the concept of ideal love, a victory embodied in
Don Alfonso and Despina. The innocent conception of ideal love is
replaced by a more down-to-earth, rational conception of human love,
love which is more the fool of Fortune than the champion of Destiny.
The loss of this older notion of love is, sadly, forever. Hildesheimer
agrees with Stefan Kunze, whom he quotes, regarding the farewell
scene of the first act: "Mozart's music makes it . . . clear that in this
farewell, of which the terzettino #10 forms the epilogue, the protago-
nists, without being aware of it, are taking leave of something utterly
irretrievable."23 Elsewhere in his remarks on Cosi, Hildesheimer's
language is pervaded with images of irreversible loss, of a fall from
grace into the "Nicht-mehr-Heilen." Accompanying this fall is the
almost diabolical beauty of Mozart's music, diabolical in the sense that
it unites Love and the mockery of Love, beauty and deceit. Hildeshei-
mer even characterizes Mozart as a diabolus ex machina who, in pre-
senting us with deceit in the guise of beauty, observes our reactions
from his eternal vantage point.24 But whatever Mozart's role, divine
yet demonic (or human and ironic), the idea of the fall from grace is
a persuasive underlying cause for the charmed air of melancholy
beauty that this opera breathes.
The theme expressed in the subtitle, The School for Lovers, works
well with the topos of the fall from grace in the sense that the lovers
must learn about love as a reality and not as a series of ideally con-
ventionalized responses. Everything was easy in Eden; the process of
learning to live in the real world entails an often painful education.
No little irony is generated by the fact that while Alfonso presumes to
educate the lovers in terms of what love is not, they learn, through
the course of their comedy, more about what love is. That is to say,
they learn about love first hand; the puppets of the first act begin to
pull their own strings.
On the subject of puppets, I would like to introduce some ideas
from what may seem an incongruous source, namely, from Heinrich
von Kleist's essay, "Ober das Marionettentheater."25 This essay is one
of the most magical pieces ,in the whole of German literature, setting
out as an innocuous discussion about puppets and concluding with the
grand cosmic cycle of the fall of man and the return to grace. One of
the protagonists in Kleist's essay tells his friend, the narrator of the
essay, that marionettes dance more naturally than human beings. The
narrator, an indignant defender of the human race, can not bring
himself to believe such an outrageous proposition. His friend explains

that the puppeteer need only guide the puppet's center of gravity (the
puppet's "soul"), and its limbs, as pure pendulums, will describe per-
fectly graceful curves. Not so with the human dancer, who is much
too self-conscious and often affects from without what comes naturally
from within for the puppet.
The friends then trade tales illustrating grace in the natural
world and the loss of it in human beings. The narrator tells of a boy
he grew up with who was very graceful until he suddenly became
aware of himself, by chancing to observe one of his graceful gestures
in a mirror. He tried repeatedly to imitate the same gesture, with no
success. He had fallen from grace right before his friend's eyes. The
other protagonist then relates a story about a fighting bear, who could
defeat the best human fencers in the area because he parried all their
thrusts and never was fooled by their feints. The bear would not even
react unless the thrust was genuine. So much for human affectation.
The two friends agree that natural grace is confounded by reflection,
that distinctly human trait, and that the only true grace is to be found
in beings existing in the state of no knowledge (the puppet) or total
knowledge (God). Man's destiny will be to attain someday to total
knowledge and thereby complete the spiral leading back to grace. The
power of reflection is a mixed blessing, then, that directly causes a fall
from grace but without which there can be no passage to the higher
planes of existence. This is why the advent of human consciousness,
brought on by a transgression, may be seen as a "felix culpa.'"26
Analogically, the characters of Cosi can be seen as puppets in a
state of innocence. This innocence is embodied in their tacit assump-
tion of ideal love, their trust in the idea of love as predestined and
eternal. They react according to the conventionalized notions sur-
rounding such a conception of love, like honor and fidelity.27 But
when they examine their notion of love too closely, by actually put-
ting it to the test, they suffer a fall from their weightless, puppet-like
state into the weighted gravity of human consciousness. Theirs was a
child's Eden and, like children, they were only too happy to let other
agencies pull the strings for them. The men's transgression of this
state of innocence, encompassed in the shameless deception of their
lovers at the behest of rationalism (in the figure of Don Alfonso), not
only brings about the unpleasant realization that their former notions
are gone forever, but also opens up for them the potential of a more
genuinely human love.28 This transformation from an ideal yet unreal-
istic state to a real, unideal state is attended by an ironic melancholy,
not unlike the sentiment we detect behind Alexander Pope's charac-

terization of Man as the "glory, jest and riddle of the world."
A similar sort of reaction to Cosi is expressed by the neo-Kantian
philosopher Hermann Cohen in his book Die dramatische Idee in
Mozarts Operntexten (Berlin, 1915). Cohen, in developing a theory of
the role of Love in Mozart's operas, is perplexed by Mozart's seeming
mockery of love in Cosi. It will not do, Cohen argues, to explain such
mockery by appealing to Rococo comic tastes, for Mozart's puppets are
but the "housings of immortal statues."29 Cohen indulges in a short
digression concerning Plato's skeptical rejection, in Phaedrus, of the
wisdom of books and Shakespeare's skeptical musings on the efficacy
of fantasy, detected by Cohen in the manner in which Shakespeare
sets conventional dramatic art on its head in A Midsummer Night's
Dream. He sees both Plato and Shakespeare as being seized by a "sou-
verane Skepsis" in regard to their several idealisms: with Plato, it is
the idealism of thought, with Shakespeare, the idealism of fantasy.
The ethical utility of both the printed work (thought "in captivity")
and the art work (as deceitful beauty) is put into question. These two
great men thus challenge their idealistic spirits, their faith in the very
endeavors they live for. And why should not Mozart, Cohen asks, fall
equally prey to such skepticism? Cohen sees this ascendancy of skepti-
cism as a necessary stage in the maturation of one's idealism, which
would otherwise go unproved, never having been challenged and suc-
cessfully defended. Mozart could only defeat this skepticism with his
"ever youthful" art. In Cosi, a consoling faith in Love survives
through all the unchaste mockery of Love. This faith can be felt by
anyone listening to the opera. Mozart thus employs his humor as a
corrective and subdues his skepticism by showing that "es ist doch
vielmehr Schein, dass alle Liebe nur Schein ware."30 And if Cost
provides a schooling for Mozart's idealism, it is no less a "School for
Lovers" in the sense that the characters of the opera learn one of
love's greatest lessons: they learn to pardon human weakness in the
beloved.31 They attain to a more realistic understanding of love--
but not before experiencing a disturbing upheaval of their previous
beliefs.32
Cohen's view is related to the ideas of Hildesheimer and Kleist
in that he, too, treats the opera as a passage from faith to doubt, a fall
from ideal grace to the struggle of reality. Cohen locates this passage
in Mozart himself, as a necessary stage in the growth of his idealism, a
tempering, and therefore strengthening, stage. Hildesheimer sees the
passage from faith to doubt in the characters' notion of ideal love, a
transition that steeps the opera in the melancholy perception of a lost

paradise. Kleist's essay, though not specifically relating to Cosi, deals
with the passage from natural grace to human consciousness, again
with a melancholy feeling of loss.
In invoking the mythic reaches of human consciousness, these read-

ings of the opera credit the music with unearthly power: namely, the
ability to grant humanity to puppets. The schooling that would teach
these star-struck marionettes to feel the gravity of human reality is
outlined in the libretto, but it is the nature of the music that leads
Hildesheimer from Don Alfonso's school of reason to the notion of a
fall from grace and that convinces Cohen of the opera's ultimate faith
in the power of love.33 Both critics hear a puppet plight become a
human plight. To a certain degree, Da Ponte's story facilitates this
transformation in the way it presents the lovers. They are portrayed
initially as equal-partner pairs, as representatives of their sex rather
than as specific human beings; very little individuality is hinted at
until the arias midway in the first act. But in the scenes we have
examined, Mozart's music goes beyond the painting of individual char-
acteristics and begins to assume the point of view of these puppets,
with the result that the illusion that defines them as puppets becomes
a truth that defines them as humans. This constitutes a schooling in
the most profound sense: the lovers learn self-consciousness and begin
to live and breathe within the ironic melancholy attendant upon such
knowledge.
Thus, the libretto furnishes Mozart with the opportunity to
achieve an all-embracing irony even more fundamental than its over-
arching dramatic irony: by providing for an illusion that the music will
then transform into truth, the libretto gives Mozart's music space
enough to simulate the irony of human consciousness. This simulation
can be heard in the degree to which the music seems both to identify
with and to mock the characters on the stage (to believe their truths
and to expose these truths as illusions). The irony in Cosi is thus of
the type described by Rosen, an irony of distance without disdain,
involvement without credulity. Mozart's music lingers between truth
and illusion, both as participant and observer.
This type of consciousness is in itself a critique of the Enlighten-
ment view of human nature as espoused by Don Alfonso, for now the
realms of truth and illusion are no longer separable. No longer is
human nature a predictable affair, subject to proof and wager. The
Enlightenment view of human nature makes such wagers plausible
because it is predicated on the fixity of reason and causality in human
affairs. The men let Don Alfonso set the terms of the wager as a dem-
onstration by experiment. This does not constitute a problem for
them, for within their worldview the underlying assumption of the
predictability of human nature and its subsequent viability for experi-
mental observation is not in question. Instead, the dispute hinges on
a black and white opposition: the men wager on the predictability of
the nature of ideal love; Alfonso wagers on the predictability of the
nature of real love. In both cases, the men project their concepts of
love onto the women; the nature of love becomes the nature of
woman. In ideal terms, women are predictably faithful, while in
Alfonso's real world they are predictably fickle. But in the world pos-
ited by Mozart's music, all is both real and ideal, nothing is predict-
able, and the simultaneous negotiation of ideal and real is ironic.
Music will no longer be assimilated into the Enlightenment's
primarily verbal world, and the demonstration of this incommensura-
bility in Cosi fan tutte comes at precisely the time when music started
to be heard to assert itself as a nonverbal counterlanguage, a locus for
both human emotion and transcendent intimation. As an authorita-
tive voice for such nonrational states as emotional and erotic attrac-
tion, music provides the breath of real human involvement, yet its
ability to do so in Cosi is surely put into relief by the nature of the
libretto and its story. The music could never achieve its charmed
effect of adding a humanizing third dimension if the story did not
establish a two-dimensional landscape of oppositions; Mozart's music
finds a soul for the "soulless terms" of Da Ponte's libretto.34
Although music and libretto arguably serve different worldviews,
their conjunction projects a unique moment in intellectual and aes-
thetic history, a moment when Enlightenment and post-Enlighten-
ment sensibilities are given mutually determining, and mutually
limiting, profiles. To pursue this point, consider the interaction of
Mozart's music with the moral propounded at the end of the libretto.
Presented as the summa of Don Alfonso's philosophy, the moral states
that "happy is the man who takes all things from their good sides
and who lets himself be guided by reason during life's setbacks. That
which makes others cry will be a cause of laughter for him, and in
the middle of this world's whirlwind he will find a beautiful serenity."
Reason is seen as the power that enables us to rise above the grim
aspects of human existence--if the puppets of Cosi have fallen from
their state of conventionalized innocence through the application of
reason, it now behooves them to apply this same reason in order to
adjust themselves to their present state, to acquiesce to the inevitable.
But the music has been telling us throughout that there is no simple
standpoint apart from our situatedness in human consciousness, no

standpoint from which one could experience untroubled serenity and
simply laugh at the pain of others. If the puppets of the first act have
truly achieved post-Enlightenment consciousness, the state suggested
by Alfonso's motto will be rendered inaccessible to them (however
vociferously they will mouth its platitude in the comic finale). What
remains after the curtain falls is not the motto and its generic comic
resolution, but the mysterious and disturbing afterimage of the music,
disturbing precisely because it reacts with a libretto whose copestone
is so clearly the product of an Enlightenment quarry. This juxtaposi-
tion of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment consciousness is the
irreducible matrix of Cosi fan tutte. If Mozart's music did not identify
so deeply with the characters' feelings, the whole thing would have
remained an exercise in parody and satire rather than a symbol of the
mystery of being human. And if Da Ponte's libretto did not provide a
setting that foregrounds this very aspect of Mozart's music, the music's
beauty would not seem so strangely wonderful, so superabundantly
ironic.
Ironic beauty is the apparition that haunts this opera; as the ghost in
Da Ponte's machine, it is a diffuse presence, often precipitating itself
where least expected. Not only is it perceptible in the numbers dis-
cussed above, but it also lurks in the wind writing of the serenade no.
21, the violas of no. 5, the incongruously beautiful harmonies in E
major marking the comic address of the notary in the second-act
finale, and in the canon in A-flat, which precedes that scene, not to
mention that canon's eventual "through the looking glass" modulation
to E major.35 Yet the ironic melancholy infiltrating this opera is not a
matter of apparitional incongruity, of the topsy-turvy doings of some
incorrigible poltergeist; rather, it has to do with the illusive nature of
beauty, as adumbrated by the singular admixture of Mozart's music and
Da Ponte's story. The melancholy associated with the fall from grace
into consciousness finds a natural association in beauty-beauty now
becomes the visible index of grace: fugitive, transitory, but a glimpse
of a paradise now discerned as an illusory realm forever beyond the
pale of mundane reality yet somehow still true.
As Shakespeare's Touchstone asserts, "The truest poetry is the
most feigning." Throughout the music of Cosi, we have seen that this
is Mozart's touchstone as well. And the ironic conjunction of truth
and illusion is not a property of art alone, but represents a donnie of
human consciousness. As the birth of such uncertainty between truth
and illusion, consciousness backs the transparent window of the world

with black, so that we may see ourselves within. And, as always with
mirrors, there is the danger of mixing the true object with its illusory
image. The fighting bear of Kleist's parable was not so encumbered; a
feint from its opponent was immediately recognized as a superfluous
gesture, one requiring no parrying response. Yet, Kleist's bear will
never understand beauty if it cannot react to a feint; the apperception
of beauty includes the melancholy knowledge of its illusory, transitory
nature.
This is why Cosi fan tutte has always haunted us, why it
a profound level without the brilliant intrigues and denouem
Figaro or the seductive power of a Don Giovanni. The melan
beauty of its music disturbs while it pleases, finds no referen
ing in a compelling dramatic situation or in the reaffirmatio
ethical status quo, but rather becomes a diffuse mise en scen
operatic representation and for all art, for any endeavor th
find truth in illusion. By thus putting the negotiation of illu
on stage, CosA plays out the divine comedy inherent in all g
that seeks to explore the plight of human consciousness.
Finally, I would like to suggest that the ironic beauty of
music of Cosi touches on the distinctive character of much
later music. If it is Beethoven's privilege to be heard to show
which is individually human may become one with the tran
heroic, it is Mozart's to listen for the ideal from the standpo
real (to play Kant to Beethoven's Hegel), to hear both the
resignation and that of revelation and to discover that they
same. This ironic identification of resignation to the real an
tion of the ideal is the magic lantern of Mozart's music, the
source of its seductive beauty. It is a conjunction that could
only find a home at the crossroads of the Enlightenment an
of Romanticism.
Generations of critics have treated Mozart's last Da Ponte opera
as a transgression, a fall from the heights established by Le Nozze di
Figaro and Don Giovanni. Yet, I am tempted to echo Augustine's cry
of faith: "O felix culpa!"-and not least because I am here encouraged
to believe in an illusion of my own, that in this opera, as in no other,
I find myself face to face with Mozart. For the music of Cosi fan tutte
is the sad ironic smile of one who has lost the garden of Eden but
learns the garden of beautiful apparition, one who both participates
and observes, believes and doubts, sympathizes and mocks. It is, I like
to think, Mozart's smile.
Notes
I wish to thank Thomas Y. Levin for his advice and encouragement, Brian Mohr for
his generous and indispensable assistance, and Michael P. Steinberg, whose cogent
criticism had a revitalizing effect on this essay.
1. Criticism of this opera has often emphasized the almost overweening role of the
music. Hermann Abert, in his classic study of Mozart, notes Mozart's "Freude am
sinnlich Sch6nen in Melodik und Instrumentation" as a singular characteristic of the
entire opera (W. A. Mozart, vol. 2 [Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hirtel, 1921], 658). Anna
Amalie Abert sees in Cosi a Remusikalisierung for Mozart, a return to more strictly
musical concerns. (Die Opern Mozarts [Wolfenbattel und Ziirich, 1970], 99). Irving
Kolodin even speaks of the music as the seventh character of the opera and finds an
important clue to this revelation in the trio number 3, "Una bella serenata," which
he sees as emblematic of the entire opera. He goes on to relate Cosi to Mozart's sere-
nade output, as he relates Don Giovanni to his late symphonies, Figaro to his piano
concerti and Die Zauberfldte to his religious music. See Irving Kolodin, "The Seventh
Character of Cost fan tutte," Cosi fan tutte (RCA recording #LSC-6146, 1968). See
also note 11 for Peter Kivy's view of the musicality of Cosi.
2. Examples of these revisions are discussed in Klaus Hortschansky, "Gegen

Unwahrscheinlichkeit und Frivolitat: Die Bearbeitungen im 19. Jahrhundert," and in
Rudolf Angermuller, "Bemerkungen zu den franz6sischen Bearbeitungen," in Cosi fan
tutte: Beitr~ge zur Wirkungsgeschichte von Mozarts Oper, ed. Susanne Vill (Bayreuth:
Muhl'scher Universitatsverlag, 1978), 54-66, and 66-90.
3. H. Abert, W. A. Mozart, 648.
4. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Mozart (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 302.
5. Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (New York: Vintage Books, 1956), 115.
6. But compare this view with Rodney Farnsworth's well-argued view that Da Ponte
and Mozart "joined forces to achieve in Cost a unified conception" based on a thor-
oughgoing and profound parody of opera seria ("Cosi fan tutte as Parody and Bur-
lesque," Opera Quarterly 6, no. 2 [1988/89]): 51.
7. Kerman, 115.
8. Andrew Steptoe addresses the problem of truth and illusion in this opera by clas-
sifying the key centers in Cosi according to sincerity, falsehood, or neutral buffo real-
ism. See Steptoe, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to
Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cost fan tutte (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1988), 233f.
9. E. T. A. Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet

and the Composer, Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 203.
10. Kerman, 116.
11. Peter Kivy has likened Cosi Fan Tutte to a sinfonia concertante, in which the
characters are "instruments with proper names." In his view, Da Ponte's libretto
"embodies right from the start the sinfonia concertante principle--the principle of per-
mutations and combinations." But in order to do this, Kivy continues, the libretto
must of necessity be less plausible psychologically than, say, those of Figaro and Don
Giovanni. In Kivy's view, then, the libretto renounces any claim to realistic psycho-
logical drama in order to assume a purely musical design. Peter Kivy, Osmin's Rage:
Philosophical Reflections on Opera, Drama, and Text (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988), 259-60.
12. H. Abert, 649.
13. Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York, W. W.
Norton, 1972), 314f.
14. H. Abert, 655.
15. One can make a case for retaining this duet, on more than one ground: its buffa
key of B-flat refers to the B-flat music of the men's return in the second-act finale; its
manner indicates that such a return, in the setting of this opera, can be but a prosaic
eventuality. More important, perhaps, is the idea that the men, when thus thrown
back on themselves, revert to puppet-like typecasting. The special emotional revela-
tions of the surrounding numbers require interaction with the women.
16. The emphasis of the fifth scale degree as an upper melodic note in plaintive
musical passages is, of course, a long-practiced convention. Obvious examples include
the opening of Mozart's Fortieth Symphony and the first four measures of Chopin's
Prelude in E Minor.
17. Rosen, 317.
18. There is an apparent parallelism between these two arias (no. 25 and no. 27) in
that both illustrate the ambivalence and potential conflict that arise within the emo-
tion of love: the struggle between desire and fidelity marks Fiordiligi's aria, while Fer-
rando's feeling of betrayal shifts readily into a feeling of renewed affection.
19. Notice also the change in familiarity of the two imperatives, "Partite" and
"Taci." Charles Ford also makes this point in Cosi? Sexual Politics in Mozart's Operas
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 202.
20. In Ford's view, the music of this section actually derives from the opening of
"Un' aura amorosa," leading him to the following interpretation: "it would seem that
Ferrando has found in Fiordiligi a suitable point of cathexis for his object-free dreams
of love" (Ford, 204).
21. One need only compare the A-major seduction duet in Don Giovanni to see how
quickly a convincing seduction can be portrayed. Of course, Ferrando is no Don Gio-
vanni and Zerlina is no Fiordiligi.
22. Hildesheimer, 301.
23. "Mozarts Musik macht . . deutlich, dass in diesem Abschied, dessen Epilog das
Terzettino (#10) ist, ohne dass es den handelnden Personen bewusst ist, Unwieder-
bringliches verabschiedet wird" (Hildesheimer, 304). The quotation is from Stefan
Kunze, "Uber das Verhiltnis von musikalisch autonomer Struktur und Textbau in
Mozarts Opern. Das Terzettino 'Soave sia il vento' (Nr. 10) aus 'Cosi fan tutte,' "
Mozart-Jahrbuch (1973/74): 220.
24. Hildesheimer, 305.
25. Heinrich von Kleist, Das Erdbeben in Chili und andere Prosasticke (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 1967), 56-65.
26. Cf. to St. Augustine's celebration of the fall of man as the "happy sin" that
draws from heaven the promise of redemption.
27. These conventionalized reactions take the form musically of a parody of the
musical conventions of opera seria, as many critics have pointed out.
28. The roles played in the traditional Fall in Eden are reversed here, since it is the
men who are tempted to taste of the Tree of Knowledge.
29. Hermann Cohen, Die dramatische Idee in Mozarts Operntexten (Berlin: B. Cas-
sirer, 1915), 98.
30. Cohen, 102.
31. Cohen, 103.
32. For another look at Cohen's view of Mozart's opera, see Gisela Glagla, "Ein
seltenes Beispiel der Rezeption in der philosophischen Asthetik," in Vill, 127-131.
33. Cf. Kerman's flat assertion of the music's authority over the libretto: "In opera
we trust what is most convincing in the music" (115).
34. "Soulless terms" is again from Kerman (116).
35. Mozart's use of the marked key E major to seal the feigned marriage agreement
links this scene with Alfonso's comic philippic on the phoenixlike fidelity of women
(no. 2), with Fiordiligi's struggle to remain faithful (no. 25), and with the emotional
heart of the opera, the terzettino (no. 10), which seems to bid farewell to ideal love
and fidelity. E major is thus central to the paradox of Cosi: it binds together high
emotion and low comedy, sincerity and deceit. In its exotic twilight realm at the far
edge of the tonal world of Mozartian opera, E major may well stand for the phoenix
that is this opera.

Mozart&#39;s Felix Culpa

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Mozart's "felix culpa: Così fan tutte" and the Irony of Beauty

Author(s): Scott Burnham

We may begin by eavesdropping on a famous conversation, from

Ferdinand: But can music be expected to express comedy in all its

Ludwig: I am absolutely convinced it can, and artists of genius have

Ferdinand: The thought now strikes me that, according to your prin-

Hoffmann, however, was presumably reacting to the almost exag-

When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!

The several numbers constituting the farewell scene of the first

The scene is announced by Don Alfonso's halting F-minor arioso (no.

Ferrando and Guglielmo's duettino no. 7 then follows, a short

some moments, truly expresses an emotional content. This in turn

silences him and begins a series of quicker two-measure alternations,

from Fiordiligi's entrance in m. 91 to the andante at m. 101. But it

Ferrando: "Cessate di scherzar, o giuro al cielo . . ."

Hildesheimer contemplates the issue of beauty and illusion in Cosi fan

tional ambience of Cosi and senses a pervasive yet covert melan-

himself to believe such an outrageous proposition. His friend explains

not unlike the sentiment we detect behind Alexander Pope's charac-

transition that steeps the opera in the melancholy perception of a lost

In invoking the mythic reaches of human consciousness, these read-

standpoint apart from our situatedness in human consciousness, no

and illusion, consciousness backs the transparent window of the world

2. Examples of these revisions are discussed in Klaus Hortschansky, "Gegen

4. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Mozart (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 302.

9. E. T. A. Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet

17. Rosen, 317.

22. Hildesheimer, 301.

24. Hildesheimer, 305.

30. Cohen, 102.

31. Cohen, 103.

34. "Soulless terms" is again from Kerman (116).

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