5 Things to Know About COSÌ FAN TUTTE

A playful wager tests the relationships of two young couples in this opera where love becomes an experiment and the classroom is transformed into a playground for temptation. Shimmering with wit and warmth, Mozart’s satirical rom-com uses mistaken identities and amorous entanglements to present a fresh and feisty commentary on the fickleness of love. 

Read on to learn more about Così fan tutte, which appears at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts from October 3, 2026!

The final hurrah

The third and final collaboration between Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (who had worked together on The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni), Così fan tutte premiered on January 26, 1790 at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Austria—just a year before the composer’s death. The title literally translates to “So do they [women] all” and is sometimes translated into English as “Women are like that.” The words feature just before the finale in Act II; a similar phrase also appears in Act I of The Marriage of Figaro.

A musical trick

The role of Fiordiligi was originally created for Da Ponte’s mistress, Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, whom Mozart is rumoured to have disliked. According to popular lore, knowing of del Bene’s tendency to drop her chin on low notes and throw back her head on high ones, Mozart punctuated her aria “Come scoglio” with a multitude of leaps from low to high and back again with the intent of making her bob like a chicken onstage.

Teamwork makes the dream work

Widely considered a perfect ensemble opera, since all the characters are given roughly equal weight, Così fan tutte  features no single lead role. Probably the opera’s best known passage is the trio “Soave sia il vento” (“O wind gently blowing”), which is sung by Don Alfonso, Fiordiligi, and Dorabella and features strings evoking a gentle breeze. Among the opera’s other ensemble pieces—which include duets, quartets, and even sextets—is Act I’s “Alla bella Despinetta” (“To the pretty little Despina”), a character-driven scene in which the sisters first meet the “Albanians”.

Too soon?

The opera’s moral ambiguity made it unpopular with Victorian audiences, and it largely fell from favour until the 20th century, when it became celebrated once again for its psychological insight and satirical humour. Its ambiguous ending has led modern productions to feature a range of resolutions in which the couples return to their original partners, switch partners, or remain in limbo. (In 2020, Finnish National Opera produced a comedic reimagining, Covid fan tutte, depicting life during the COVID-19 pandemic using other music by Mozart).

A bold design

In our production, directed by legendary Canadian stage and film director Atom Egoyan, the action is set in a school—a direct allusion to the opera’s subtitle, “The School for Lovers”. The production also features a large representation of Frida Kahlo’s double self-portrait from 1939, which Egoyan connects to Così’s exploration of the boundaries between duty and freedom. Other notable design elements include a giant cabinet of curiosities, as well as a number of elaborate blue wigs with tall ships woven in—which former head of Wigs and Makeup Sharon Ryman describes as one of her top 10 creations from her COC career!

Così fan tutte appears at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts from October 3 - 18, 2026.

Photo Credits: 

• Così fan tutte at the Canadian Opera Company, 2019. Photo: Michael Cooper.
• Portrait of Lorenzo Da Ponte at the New York Yacht Club by Samuel Morse.
• Portrat of soprano Adriana Ferrarese del Bene during her performances at the King's Theatre.
• Covid fan tutte: Mozart in Helsinki, 2020. Photo: The Finnish National Opera
• Così fan tutte at the Canadian Opera Company, 2019. Photo: Michael Cooper