A third chapter takes up two problem operas, Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790). Understood in light of the foregoing, these operas are complex but ultimately consistent with the Republic of Love. In Così fan tutte, Mozart musically departs from the spirit of Da Ponte’s cynical libretto (an expression, perhaps, of Da Ponte’s own career). Mozart is drawn inexorably toward a different type of journey: from superficial playfulness to genuine emotional depth. This journey cannot be happily completed in the social world of the libretto. Don Giovanni is an enduring enigma, and this chapter investigates a group of “Romantic” interpretations that see the work as glorifying the Don and his violence toward women as an expression of some type of life force. This chapter rejects those interpretations, and also, though more tentatively, the idea that here, too, Mozart’s music is at odds with Da Ponte’s libretto. Both libretto and, even more clearly, the music focus on the journey of the three female characters from wounded honor and the quest for revenge to new emotions of delight, love, and forgiveness.