Apparently the thing was based on an authentic history. The two young officers praised the beauty and virtue of their fiancées. Some Viennese aristocrat, an old skeptic, listened to this and made a bet that he would prove to them how questionable women's fidelity was. All it took was a skillful hoax and a few simple theatrical measures - a costume under which young men were hiding, hot love spells and dramatic gestures to crush the hearts of the shy women.
Soon they were able to change the object of their feelings and were ready to succumb to the "new" admirers. The signing of the ready-made wedding contracts was prevented by the unexpected "return" of the outraged young men ... The bet was lost, the betrayal was discovered. The bitter truth of the comforting old man remained that "so do all" ...
The naive, even unbelievable story was used by the genius Mozart to create another masterpiece - opera buffa Cosí fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amante(They all do so, i.e. The School of Lovers), which is one of the most amazing and ambiguous dramatic works in the composer's oeuvre. It was commissioned by Emperor Joseph II, and was written in record time, in the late fall of 1789. A brilliantly constructed libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, a musician shimmering with colors and sparkling with unusual light without a single unnecessary note - give this opera extraordinary lightness and grace. At the same time, it is as if lined with a second bottom, it contains elements of parody and pastiche, referring to the genre itself (mixing and inverting the buffa and series elements), as well as to the "truth" about life and about a man, about a woman, a man, about their nature and relations between them.
