Considering the influence that the process of casting could have on an opera's reception, it is surprising that so little is known either about how it was done, or about who had responsibility for making the decisions. The theatre management under the direction of Joseph II himself (until his withdrawal from active involvement) had the final say over which singers were recruited in the first place and their salaries, but it is not clear that this overall control extended to the allocation of roles. By the time that Così fan tutte was being composed, Da Ponte had established a position of some influence in the company, and he later claimed that he had written this libretto specifically for Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, his mistress. But Francesco Bussani, himself a member of the cast of Così fan tutte, apparently also took some responsibility for casting decisions. When reorganising the theatre in the summer of 1791, the new emperor Leopold argued for the dismissal of that ‘rascally intriguer’ and demanded that: ‘Bussani will from now on no longer have any say in the direction of the theatre or in the distribution of roles.’ An important context in which the casting of Così fan tutte took place was thus the rivalry between Da Ponte and Bussani over whose was the responsibility for allocating roles.

Some (doubtless very one-sided) glimpses of this struggle for influence are to be found in the series of memoranda that the librettist wrote following his dismissal in 1791. In one of these he singles out Bussani as his ‘third adversary’ (‘il terzo nemico’), the first two being Salieri and Thorwart, who was involved in the financial management of the Viennese theatres. He claims that this enmity arose because he had not given Bussani prime roles when he had first come to sing in Vienna, the implication being that he (Da Ponte) had control over this. Since then, he had recruited ‘La Villeneuve’ and had attempted to hire ‘La Casparini’, both appointments being opposed by Bussani. Da Ponte asserts that the management of the opera had explicitly given to him the duty to propose performers and to contact them, but it is clear that recently the balance had been changing.