and the music takes the cue therefrom. While borrowing the pathetic tone and form of the opera seria, she turns them into a parody like that of the text, invoking the furies with all the rhetorical apparatus of tragedy; this is especially noticeable towards the close:--[See Page Image] {COSÌ FAN TUTTE.} (254) The parody facilitates the difficult task of carrying the musical expression of emotion to an exaggerated degree without making it ugly and unnatural. The refined delivery of the vocalist, and the ready apprehension of the audience, must always be presupposed. In the character of Fiordiligi Da Ponte has unquestionably kept Ferraresi del Bene in view; he was said to stand in tender relations towards her.[46] According to him she had a fine voice and an original and affecting delivery, and this opinion was confirmed by the London critics, although she was never considered there as a true prima donna;[47] and Mozart himself remarked that it was not saying much to pronounce Allegrandi far superior to Ferraresi. She had not a good figure, and was but an indifferent actress; but she had beautiful eyes and a charming mouth, and was in great favour with the public. It is not surprising, therefore, that Fiordiligi should have been placed on a higher level than her sister, both musically and dramatically.[48] Her very first air (14) places her in a far more favourable light. The disguised lovers, after a decided repulse, renew their shameless attack. Fiordiligi's condescending to answer them and to assert her inflexible constancy may not, indeed, be a proof of fine feeling on her part, but it demands an energetic and emphatic tone and strong and appropriate colouring. We therefore have a bravura air in two movements, an andante and allegro, closed by a long coda in accelerated tempo. The comic effect again rests on the element of parody, which is even more strongly marked than in Dorabella's air; the bravura passages, intervals of octaves, tenths and twelfths, the roulades which she flings at her opponents, the bass-like passages in the deeper register of the voice, all characterise Fiordiligi's Amazon-like haughtiness in an exaggerated manner. Afterwards, it is true, she {FERRANDO.} (255)