"Cosi fan tutte (Thus Do They All or The School for Lovers)" is an opera written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during his last frenetic year of creative life. The opera premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on January 26,1790 and was popular for most of the rest of the 18th and early 19th centuries before it was decided to be way too racy to be put on the stage. The topic was one that offended sensibilities of that time--mainly that of wife swapping although this was done by the husbands who were not too sure of their wives fidelity to their marriage. However, the wives knew what was going on and provided some of their own disguises which began a complex battle of the sexes. It isn't any wonder, then, that social critics forbade the performance of this work except in bowdlerized versions which were, in every way, inferior to the original. It wasn't until after World War 2 that the world that "Cosi fan Tutte" began taking the stages of the world, thanks to the pioneering efforts that emminent Mozartean Fritz Busch, who had presented the opera at Glyndebourne in 1935 and made a recording of the original score that same year.The sparkling wit of the plot is reflected in an overture that has the sanctimonious pledge of the husbands in static chords before the merriment comes through in a series of florid displays of virtuosity in the winds. True to form, there are hints of deep tragedy in the melodic line, as if Mozart was hinting at more personal problems that faced him every day he awoke. The overall impression is one of deft displays of orchestration unimaginable by lesser minds (no less a composer than Antonio Salieri commissioned the libretto but blanched at the subject matter and stopped work on it; that's how Mozart got the commission, he wasn't exactly afraid of the subject matter!). 1. The wind players of the Royal Philharmonic were, like all of the players in this February 1961 recording at Abbey Road studios, all hand picked by their founder Sir Thomas Beecham who had returned from a North American tour physically in tatters and would not be able to conduct the orchestra at all as he died in April 1961. Thus it fell to a young Colin Davis to step into one of the sessions and show his mettle in this finely wrought performance. Listen for the coordination of the wind players. They were; GEOFFREY GILBERT, flute TERENCE MacDONAGH, oboe CECIL JAMES, bassoon JACK BRYMER, clarinet