Dorian Brady at Aeon Magazine:
Mozart sets this text to music of almost unbearable tenderness. The aria is graceful and resigned, and the whole scene is among the most beautiful in the opera. Nowhere up to this point has Fiordiligi sounded so sincere, so defeated, so richly deserving of our sympathy and compassion.
But beneath the music’s ravishing surface runs an undercurrent of cruel irony. Woven into the orchestral accompaniment are two solo horns that intrude on Fiordiligi’s melody when it repeats, punctuating her line with ornate interjections. Audiences in the 18th century would have recognised these horn calls as musical symbols of cuckoldry, a widely understood pun on the image of the ‘horned husband’ who suffers sexual betrayal by his inconstant wife. The horns’ presence here shatters Fiordiligi’s most heartfelt declaration of shame.
more here.