Così fan tutte

Così fan tutte ossia La scuola degli amanti
Opera by W. A. Mozart
Playbill of the first performance
Translation	Thus Do They All, or The School for Lovers
Librettist	Lorenzo Da Ponte
Language	Italian
Premiere	26 January 1790 (1790-01-26) Burgtheater, Vienna

Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (Italian: [koˈzi fan ˈtutte osˈsiːa la ˈskwɔːla deʎ aˈmanti]; Thus Do They All, or The School for Lovers), K. 588, is an Italian-language opera buffa in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed on 26 January 1790 at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Austria. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte who also wrote Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni.

Although it is commonly held that Così fan tutte was written and composed at the suggestion of the Emperor Joseph II, recent research does not support this idea. There is evidence that Mozart's contemporary Antonio Salieri tried to set the libretto but left it unfinished. In 1994, John Rice uncovered two terzetti by Salieri in the Austrian National Library.

The title, Così fan tutte, literally means "Thus do all [women]" but is usually translated into English as "Women are like that". The words are sung by the three men in act 2, scene 13, just before the finale; this melodic phrase is also quoted in the overture to the opera. Da Ponte had used the line "Così fan tutte le belle" earlier in Le nozze di Figaro (in act 1, scene 7).

The first performance of Mozart's setting took place at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 26 January 1790. It was given only five times before the run was stopped by the death of the Emperor Joseph II and the resulting period of court mourning. It was performed twice in June 1790 with the composer conducting the second performance, and again in July (twice) and August (once). After that it was not played in Vienna during Mozart's lifetime. The first British performance was in May 1811 at the King's Theatre, London.Così fan tutte was not performed in the U.S. until 1922, when it was given at the Metropolitan Opera.