About the work
La finta giardiniera is an opera buffa that eighteen-year-old Mozart composed for the Munich carnival season of 1775. The libretto, probably by Giuseppe Petrosellini, premiered on 13 January 1775 at the Salvatortheater in Munich, in the presence of Elector Maximilian III Joseph.
Plot
The Marchesa Violante disguises herself as the gardener Sandrina to pursue her unfaithful lover Count Belfiore, who has since become engaged to Arminda. Mistaken identities and mutual deceptions among the couples drive the confusion to the brink of madness before all is resolved.
Cultural significance
The work mixes comic scenes with serious, semi-tragic ones (mezzo carattere) and already shows traces of the psychological subtlety Mozart would later develop in "Le nozze di Figaro" and "Don Giovanni".