Master of Ambiguity: Meet the Man behind COSÌ FAN TUTTE

Librettist, collaborator, provocateur—who was Lorenzo Da Ponte?

Along with The Magic Flute, the three “Da Ponte operas” (Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, and The Marriage of Figaro) continue to be the most frequently performed and most beloved of Mozart’s operatic works, showcasing the composer at his height. 

But their librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, elevated the operas buffa even further with unusually nuanced and complex libretti that endowed their characters with unusual depth (by contemporary standards), played up tensions between the social classes, and grappled with some of the leading moral and philosophical questions of the Enlightenment. 

Paired with Mozart’s genius for musical storytelling, Da Ponte’s words are crucial to these operas’ timeless allure. And in Così fan tutte, we meet the librettist at the peak of his powers.

Born Jewish but converted to Catholicism at the age of 14 when his father remarried, Lorenzo Da Ponte benefitted from a classical education sponsored by the bishop who baptised him. A notorious playboy in his youth (while living in Venice, he was banished from the city for 15 years on charges of “bad living” following an entanglement with a married woman), Da Ponte reinvented himself multiple times throughout his life: from professor of poetry to Catholic priest in 1770s Italy, to writer and translator in 1780s Austria, to teacher in 1790s England. 

In 1805, debt and bankruptcy sent him to the United States, where he ran a grocery store, then a bookstore in New York City, before being appointed the first professor of Italian literature at Columbia College. In 1826 he produced the first full performance of Don Giovanni in the United States, and later introduced Rossini’s operas to the young country through a concert tour. Perhaps his most enduring achievement was the founding of New York’s first opera house, a precursor to both The Met and the New York Academy of Music.

Music historian David Conway has suggested that Da Ponte's own experience of living “in disguise” for much of his life—as a Jew, priest, poet, and libertine—may partly explain his fascination with themes of disguise in his operas. Così fan tutte’s central conceit, of two young men who don disguises to prove that their lovers will still recognize them—only for their shared certainty about love to unravel over the course of the opera—is perhaps the most vivid example of Da Ponte’s humorous exploration of the masks we wear.

Da Ponte’s libretto for Così was in fact originally intended for the more established composer Antonio Salieri. However, after Salieri abandoned the opera having written only a small part, the commission passed over to Mozart—and operatic history was made.

Così was the only original libretto that Da Ponte provided Mozart (Don Giovanni being a reimagining of the classic Don Juan tale and The Marriage of Figaro based on a stage comedy by Beaumarchais). As such, it allowed him to fully flex his cynical wit, skill at writing in verse, deep knowledge of classical maxims and literary allusion (Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Boccaccio’s Decameron are both referenced), and taste for subversion of popular romantic ideals. 

Shaped by prevalent themes and ideals of the Enlightenment, the opera features a satirical plot that examines the concept of human behaviour as mechanically predictable, playing with 18th-century philosophies that sought to explain human nature through scientific principles. Although Da Ponte himself always referred to the opera as The School for Lovers, Mozart changed the title to Cosi fan tutte at the last minute. 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 (Da Ponte also incorporated a similar phrase in Act I of The Marriage of Figaro).

The wry humour contained in Da Ponte’s acerbic language is perfectly encapsulated when the maid Despina reminds Dorabella, “No one has yet died from love. To die for a man? There will be others that will reward your suffering.” The tension between Da Ponte’s no-nonsense libretto and the emotional colour of Mozart’s music makes the opera famously difficult to categorize—and its conclusions enduringly open to interpretation.

In another pioneering move, Da Ponte developed his characters not only through solo arias but also in duets, trios, and larger ensembles. These include “Alla bella Despinetta” (“To the pretty little Despina”), a character-driven scene in which the sisters first meet the brothers in disguise; “Di scrivermi ogni giorno” (“Write to me every day”), a quintet in which the couples bid each other an emotional farewell; and "Fra gli amplessi in pochi istanti" (“In a few moments I’ll be in his embrace”), in which Fiordiligi and Ferrando confront each other just ahead of the final resolution.

One of opera's most colourful, complex, and compelling figures, Lorenzo Da Ponte brought to his collaborations with Mozart a rare combination of literary sophistication, worldly experience, and an instinct for exposing the contradictions of human nature. More than two centuries after its premiere, Così fan tutte continues to provoke debate and delight audiences precisely because it resists easy answers—and, like its author, the enduring ambiguity at the heart of the opera remains perhaps its greatest strength. 

Experience Così fan tutte in person when Atom Egoyan’s outlandish production opens at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on October 3, 2026!

Photo Credits:

• Portrait of Lorenzo Da Ponte, c. 1822
• Portrait of Lorenzo Da Ponte at the New York Yacht Club by Samuel Morse
• Detail from Portrait of the Mozart Family by Johann Nepomuk della Croce, c. 1781
• Playbill for the premiere of Così fan tutte at the Burgtheater in Vienna, January 26, 1790
• Sculpture of Lorenzo Da Ponte by Giorgio Igne in Millstatt, Austria