Così Fan Tutte – the third and last of Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte’s collaborations – followed Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1786) and Don Giovanni (Prague, 1787). This was a time of increased penury and loss for Wolfgang and Constanze (two children died during the writing of writing Così) but also one of almost unfathomable creativity for Mozart, who wrote his three last symphonies within a matter of weeks. Così (commissioned by the Emperor Joseph II) had its première in Vienna on 26 January 1790 (with Joseph Haydn in the audience) and would have run for longer than its season of ten performances but for the emperor’s death in February 1790. Mozart would compose two more operas – La Clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte (both in 1791) – before dying at the end of that year, aged thirty-five.

Da Ponte wrote an original libretto, possibly based on a real incident that had titillated Viennese society. (We know that Da Ponte drew on Tirso de Molina, Ariosto’s Orlando Furiosa, and a tale in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.) He probably wrote it for Salieri, then passed it on to Mozart when Salieri decided not to proceed with it. The libretto is misogynistic and contemptuous. ‘Parody,’ David Cairns has remarked, ‘is present in the earlier Mozart-Da Ponte operas. But here it is central, and the effect is continually to throw us into uncertainty as to what is actually meant.’ Farce and folly are prominent. ‘Only those who approach [the libretto] expecting a profound dissertation on the nature of love and fidelity are likely to find it seriously disappointing,’ writes Charles Porter.

The premise of the opera – leaning heavily on disguise, falsity, unreliability – is well known, and polarising. Edward J. Dent once described Così Fan Tutte as ‘the apotheosis of insincerity’ (‘the only moment when anybody speaks the truth is when Don Alfonso utters the statement which forms the title of the opera’).

Don Alfonso, the old philosopher, is determined to prove that Fiordiligi and Dorabella are corruptible, capable of infidelity. Their venal beaux – Guglielmo and Ferrando respectively – accept the wager and depart, full of swagger, on a fictitious military errand, only to return in disguise as two Albanians with their superb moustaches (‘triumphs of manliness, the plumage of love’). Spurred on by Don Alfonso and the two women’s maid, Despina (who, in Da Ponte’s libretto, is unaware of the Albanians’ true identity), they compete to seduce each other’s fiancée.

Patrick Nolan’s production was first seen in Brisbane almost exactly a year ago. Now it travels to Adelaide for a short season at Her Majesty’s Theatre (there is one more performance, on 7 September).

This sunny, boisterous production opens on a more economical version of the island-setting of The White Lotus, one of its inspirations, along with Italian films such La Dolce Vita, as set and costume designer Elizabeth Gadsby states in the program. Gadsby’s bright and functional set sits well on Her Majesty’s broad stage. There are two veiled hotel suites on either side, soon occupied by this week’s lovers: Fiordiligi and Guglielmo; and Dorabella and Ferrando.

It can be hard, even in the stateliest production of Così, to identify with Mozart’s capricious lovers as they flirt and squabble and undergo a kind of forced revolution in their understanding of what constitutes love and constancy. Here, the physical comedy, in the first act, is relentless, subtlety at a decided premium. Satirical points are made over and over again, reducing the principals to caricatures. Fiordiligi, late in the romp that follows Guglielmo and Ferrando’s return (via Bali, it seems), knees him in the groin. The scene when Despina, as the comical doctor revives the comatose Albanians (a sly reference to Doctor Mesmer, known to the Mozarts), felt interminable.

The problem with this sort of freneticism – in such a magnificently scored opera – is that eventually the characters must pull themselves together, clear their throats, retrieve their credibility (their individuality even), and prove themselves worthy of some of Mozart’s most affecting music. Moments after the director has Ferrando mansplaying and then humping a wall, Adrian Strooper must sing ‘Un aura amorosa’, one of Mozart’s most exquisite tenor arias. Notwithstanding these interpretative challenges, Strooper (standing in for the indisposed Kyle Stegall) does so valiantly.

The score itself, with its prominent violas and trumpets, is inspired and profoundly moving. (Someone has spoken of its Watteau-like radiance.) Mozart achieves something much subtler with the subject than Da Ponte does in his libretto. David Cairns again: ‘With all its artifice and its apparent unreality, Da Ponte’s scenario gave Mozart the ironist and compassionate anatomist of the human heart a perfect field for his gifts.’

The opera is notable for its ensembles – far more of them than in Figaro or Don Giovanni – duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, you name it (this is Mozart at his most fluent and virtuosic). Despite Da Ponte’s restrictions, the women – as so often in Mozart’s operas – seem to feel more deeply than the often quite obtuse men. Feeling and suffering go together here.

Anna Dowsley as Dorabella and Adrian Strooper as Ferrando (photograph by Andrew Beveridge)

ABR Arts was seeing its first opera in the refurbished Her Majesty’s Theatre. From row D in the dress circle, the orchestra was almost invisible, and it was hard to see the conductor, Dane Lam, who also played harpsichord, as did Mozart in 1790. In the dress circle, the sound was worryingly thin and two-dimensional. The Overture seemed rushed. (Interestingly, its only quote from the opera is the moment in Act II when the three men sing ‘Così fan tutte’ –‘All women are like that’). Nor were the singers heard to their best advantage, especially Jessica Dean as a squally Despina.

The sound was considerably better in the second half when ABR Arts migrated to the front row of the circle, on the right side, near the pit and the stage. After the excesses of Act I, the production settled down and explored Mozart’s richly suggestive themes – especially when they cleared the stage, retaining only the fountain, beneath which the lovers splash and loll.

None of the characters feels more deeply than Fiordiligi, who, on the solo front, is given the most astonishing music in the opera. We know that Mozart didn’t like his original Fiordiligi, Adriana Ferrarese de Bene, who happened to be Da Ponte’s mistress at the time. Mozart did her no favours with ‘Come scoglio’ in Act I. Sky Ingram, a statuesque and invested Fiordiligi, was at her best in the great Act II aria, the equally taxing and precipitous ‘Per pietà, ben mio, perdona’, where the horns play a prominent role.

Anna Dowsley is an experienced Dorabella. She sang the part in Brisbane last year and stood out in David McVicar’s excellent production (Opera Australia, 2016 and 2019). Dowsley gave us another fine account of the role, both her duets with Fiordiligi highlights of the night.

Christopher Hillier was an assured, tuneful Don Alfonso, at his best in the many ensembles, especially the famous Act I trio ‘Soave sia il vento’. Nick Lester seemed under-voiced as Guglielmo. The State Opera Chorus was much reduced – just eight of them, posing some issues when it came to the martial chorus in Act I.

Although the lovers are grudgingly reunited at the end, Così remains such an unsettling opera for what it tells us about the pettiness of human relations, the brittleness of friendship, and the fickleness of love. The end felt as unresolved as ever. To whom are Fiordiligi and Dorabella returning? What are these men really like beneath their moustaches? How will the women recall their Neapolitan pranks? Whom will they ever trust again?

Unpindownable in a way, far from consoling, ‘the apotheosis of insincerity’ even, Così Fan Tutte nevertheless grows in grandeur and moral implications each time we see it.

Così Fan Tutte (State Opera South Australia and Opera Queensland) continues at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide on 7 September 2024. Performance attended: 29 August.