Despina, the maid, is shameless when it comes to giving her mistresses advice on how to deal with their men. Mozart, “Cosi fan tutte”: When a girl is 15, she should know how to make a man beg. “Oh my love, I yearn for you/ (In a meadow sweet)/ (From my sleep)/ Your hair of gold/ (in a secret valley)/ (so deep)/ your eyes so blue/ (Resting on my staff)/ (so long)/ Oh that you held me/ (fast)/ (by the c***)/ in your arms/ (I come)/ (crowing loud)/ I am transported/ (to where my love doth lie)/ (I am aroused)/ by your charms/ (And all my senses sense defy)/ (My dream is flown.)” Read the song if you don’t believe me (everything in parentheses is what the chorus adds): “Sandy’s song” from “The Lighthouse,” Peter Maxwell Davies: This one starts out innocently enough: “Oh my love, I yearn for you/ Your hair of gold, your eyes so blue/ Oh that you held me in your arms!/ I am transported by your charms.” And then the chorus joins in and all hell breaks loose. The song is a cut aria8212 it doesn’t appear in the opera because Mozart decided it didn’t fit in context. Everyone wants to check out my awesome bedroom skills.” Only in more lyrical and beautiful language than that. Mozart, from “Cosi fan tutte”: Guglielmo, a lyric baritone, touts his own prowess as a lover-boy: “I’m hot, I’m young girls can’t get enough of me. Here are some of opera’s most raunchy love songs, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Remember, the librettists writing the stories were keen on making people laugh, and some comic operas had as much slapstick as a decent episode of “Saturday Night Live.” In fact, to say opera is not full of hilarity8212 even the ones that aren’t intentionally funny8212 is like saying Shakespeare’s plays are not full of dirty humor: complete bull. Opera, even in its purest, most unpolluted form, is filled with innuendo and smut. Despite all its best efforts, opera is still considered8212 by some8212 to be about as interesting as watching infomercials alone on a Saturday night or as painful as getting a root canal.

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