There is little doubt that V1 was involved centrally in the process of transmitting the text of Così fan tutte. A few copies seem to derive directly from V2, which contained not only all the ‘agreed’ cuts but also the further revisions which Mozart made at a slightly later date, but V1 was clearly the main reference score to which copyists turned when they received a commission for a manuscript replica. Its relationship to other early copies must now be taken into consideration. Copies of the opera that date from before around 1815, the era of Die Zauberprobe, are listed in Table 27.

I have made an attempt to put the sources in approximate chronological order, although this is far from easy to determine, not least because many of them are composite scores, the component parts of which date from very different periods. Before the publication of a full score in 1810, the only way to obtain performance materials was to purchase a manuscript copy. Those that survive today range in character from unified scores compiled at the same time and place, to miscellaneous assemblages from many different periods. Although there were early Italian language productions in Prague, Dresden and Leipzig, German translations predominate markedly throughout the 1790s and beyond, and it was not until well into the nineteenth century that the opera was once again given regularly in its original language. Yet notwithstanding the prevalence of productions in German, the dissemination of scores with the Italian text remained central to the transmission of the opera. When a new German language staging was agreed, the first requirement was evidently still for a score with Italian which would act as the local source text. It might generate a further copy with only the new German text or it might itself be annotated with the new text. The local source score might remain in use for a considerable period, with subsequent adaptations of the libretto being added in, as and when new productions were mounted. Some have three or four such added texts. Overall, the main period for the dissemination of manuscript scores was the two decades from 1790 until 1810. After the publication of the printed full score, the flow diminishes, whilst by no means ceasing altogether. Once an opera house had invested in performance materials, they often remained in use for a very long time.