Scene 3 brings on at once the sixth and most engaging member of the cast. She is the maid Despina, a coloratura soprano. In a recitative she complains about how bad it is to have to be a maid, and, while complaining, she tastes bet mistresses' chocolate. The sisters now enter their drawing room, and Dorabella has a tremendous mock-heroic aria, Smanie implacabili. She cannot bear, she says, having fresh air. Shut the windows! She cannot live through her grief! When Despina learns what all the grief is about—that is, the gills' lovers have gone to war—she gives some real Don Alfonso advice: have a good time while they are gone, for they won't prove faithful. Soldiers never do. Indignantly the girls storm from the room.
 

Enter now Don Alfonso. With a half-dollar bribe he persuades the maid to help in his plan, which is to get the girls to look with favor on two new suitors. Ferrando and Guglielmo appear almost at once, disguised in beards and dressed like Albanians. When the girls return, Alfonso makes believe that the Albanians are old friends, and the two young men try making love to their own fiancees. But the girls will have none of it. In an aria (Come scoglio) Fiordiligi violently declares her eternal faithfulness. Maybe, like the lady in Hamlet, she protests too much. At any rate, her aria has the most astounding range and huge skips—peculiar, exaggerated difficulties especially composed by Mozart for Da Ponte's talented mistress, who was the first to sing it. Guglielmo tries to plead bis suit with a fine tune—but again without any luck. The girls walk out on him—much to the delight of their fiances. These (in the ensuing trio) try to get Don Alfonso to settle up, but he says ifs still too early. Ferrando, the tenor of the team, then sings of his happiness in his love, and the scene ends with Don Alfonso and Despina making further plans to win the girls over.

Scene 4 takes us back to the garden. The two girls have another sweet duet about bow sad they are, when theie is noise off-stage. Their two lovers, still disguised as Albanians, totter in with Don Alfonso. It seems that they have

arsenic because of their hopeless passion. (Of course, have really done no such thing.) Don Alfonso and Despina assure the sisters that the men die without help—and off they rush for a doctor. While they are gone, the two girls are in delightful confusion, taking their men's pulses and giving other pointless first aid. Then Despina returns, disguised with huge spectacles as a doctor and speaking the most extraordinary jargon. Finally (and this is a bit of satire on Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism), she brings out a huge magnet; she applies it to the prostrate bodies; and—miracle of miracles! —they begin to come to. Their first words are words of love; and though (in the final sextet) the girls continue to protest, it is clear that Don Alfonso's scheme is beginning to work.