Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (Thus Do They All, or The School for Lovers) K. 588, is an opera buffa in two acts by W.A. Mozart, first performed in 1790. The Italian libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte, who also wrote Figaro and Don Giovanni. Though 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 Riceuncovered two terzetti by Salieri in the Austrian National Library. The title, Così fan tutte, literally means "Thus do all [women]" and is popularly used to mean "Women are like that".The instrumentation is as follows: strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 timpani (in G and C) – an additional military drum is used on stage.
