ABSTRACT
Joseph Kerman claims that Mozart's music makes clear that the central issue in the opera is not Alfonso's demonstration of the predictability of human nature but rather the mystery of human feeling. Mozart's music lingers between truth and illusion, both as participant and observer. Music can convey, for example, an impression of the most delicious irony, such as that pervading Mozart's splendid opera Cosi fan tutte. Hildesheimer contemplates the issue of beauty and illusion in Cosi fan tutte within the framework of a boldly speculative interpretation. Hildesheimer even characterizes Mozart as a diabolus ex machina who, in presenting audiance with deceit in the guise of beauty, observes their reactions from his eternal vantage point. Hermann Cohen's view is related to the ideas of Hildesheimer and Kleist in that he, too, treats the opera as a passage from faith to doubt, a fall from ideal grace to the struggle of reality.
