icates mortal challenge.--Turridu, deeply
repenting his folly, as well as his falsehood towards poor Santuzza,
recommends her to his mother.--He hurries into the garden, where Alfio
expects him;--a few minutes later his death is announced by the
peasants, and Santuzza falls back in a dead swoon; with which the
curtain closes over the tragedy.--

COSI FAN TUTTE.

Comic Opera in two acts by MOZART.

Text by DA PONTE, newly arranged by L. SCHNEIDER and ED. DEVRIENT.

This opera, though lovely in its way, has never had the success, which
the preceding Figaro and Don Juan attained, and this is due for the
most {42} part to the libretto. In the original text it really shows
female fickleness, and justifies its title. But the more Mozart's
music was admired, the less could one be satisfied with such a
libretto. Schneider and Devrient therefore altered it and in their
version the two female lovers are put to the test, but midway in the
plot it is revealed to them that they are being tried--, with the
result that they feign faithlessness, play the part out and at the
close declare their knowledge, turning the sting against the authors of
the unworthy comedy. The contents may be told shortly.

Don Fernando and Don Alvar are betrothed to two Andalusian ladies,
Rosaura and Isabella.

They loudly praise their ladies' fidelity, when an old bachelor, named
Onofrio, pretends that their sweet-hearts are not better than other
women and accessible to temptation. The lovers agree to make the trial
and promise to do everything which Onofrio dictates. Thereupon they
announce to the ladies, that they are ordered to Havannah with their
regiment, and after a tender leavetaking, they depart to appear again
in another guise, as officers of a strange regiment. Onofrio has won
the ladies-maid, Dolores, to aid in the furtherance of his schemes and
the officers enter, beginning at once to make love to Isabella and
Rosaura, but each, as was before agreed, to the other's affianced.

Of course the ladies reject them, and the lovers begin to triumph, when
Onofrio prompts them to try another temptation. The strangers, mad
with {43} love, pretend to drink poison in the young ladies' presence.
Of course these tenderhearted maidens are much aggrieved; they call
Dolores, who bids her mistresses hold the patients in their arms; then
coming disguised as a physician, she gives them an antidote. By this
clumsy subterfuge they excite the l