The start of disappointment. A moral lesson from Mozart and Da Ponte

Abstract

People write that Cosi fan tutte is an opera about deceitfulness, the emptiness of words, in certain social conditions. To the cynical philosopher Don Alfonso, this is indeed the essential fact: none of the yound protagonists’ statements have any weight. But to speak of moral pessimism, to argue that this work takes an acerbic view on the human condition, one would need to accept as an axiom that any form of loyalty shown by these young girls would actually be a symptom of ethical behaviour. Da Ponte and Mozart’s masterwork deconstructs this very premise.