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.
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti, K. 588, is an Italian-language opera buffa in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed on 26 January 1790, at the Wiener 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]" and is popularly used to mean "Women are like that". The words are sung by the three men in act 2, scene 13, just before the finale. Da Ponte had used the line "Così fan tutte le belle" earlier in Le nozze di Figaro.