In the third act, Nardo is again scorned by Serpetta, then Belfiore and Sandrina attack him, making passionate love to him in their madness, and he escapes with difficulty. The Podestà is beset by Serpetta, whom he repulses, by Arminda, who wants to wed Belfiore, and by Ramiro, who demands Arminda's hand, though she again declares that she detests him.
Belfiore and Sandrina having fallen asleep in the garden, awake to soft music, cured of their madness; they recognise each other, and after some resistance she listens to his suit. Upon this Arminda resolves to bestow her hand on Ramiro, and Serpetta on Nardo, and only the Podestà remains unmated.
It was no easy task even to follow these clumsily connected situations, too incoherent to be called a plot; and it
{ "LA FINTA GIARDINIERA"--GERMAN VERSION.}
would have taxed the efforts of any composer to save such a work from utter oblivion.
Only the second and third acts of Mozart's original score (196 K.) are preserved, in two volumes, containing together 344 pages; the first is lost, and there is no known copy of the Italian score, so that the recitatives of the first act are unknown.
The opera was later produced in German; the German text is inserted in the original score by L. Mozart, with trifling alterations of a note here and there to suit the declamation. Besides these there are numerous abbreviations, both in the recitatives and in some of the songs (13, 17, 19, 25), which were made for the first performance at Munich, and indicated by rough chalk strokes and erasures; with the same end, Mozart recomposed the whole of an abridged scene.
The abridged songs are adopted in the German version, but one air (20), which was marked in chalk "to be omitted," is retained. That Wolfgang was himself concerned in this adaptation is proved by the fact that on certain pages the accompanied recitatives which were retained in the German opera are rewritten in his own hand. Spoken dialogue takes the place of the plain recitatives, and the German cues are inserted by a third hand. In Rei-chardt's "Theaterkalender," the operetta, "Das verstellte Gartner-Madchen" has been included among Mozart's works since 1781, and it was performed under this title at Frankfort in 1789. Mozart probably undertook the adaptation after his return from Paris to Salzburg, when he busied himself with the improvement of German opera. The translation may safely be ascribed to Schachtner. The score is preserved in duplicate; and a selection of the songs was printed by André under the title "Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe."[21]