By MICHAEL CARUSO
     The Academy of Vocal Arts Opera Theater will bring its production of
Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" to The Haverford School's Centennial Hall on Thursday
and Saturday evenings, November 18 and 20. Curtain is 7:30 for both
performances and the production will be sung in Italian with English supertitles
projected above the stage.
     Directing the mounting will be Chuck Hudson, who has also directed at
the Minnesota Opera, Seattle Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Manhattan
School of Music Opera Theater and many others. His specialty in movement comes
from a background in gymnastics and he is one of only three Americans ever to
receive a diploma from the Marcel Marceau International School of Mimedrama in
Paris. He is the only American to be appointed to teach at Marceau's School
and he performed with the acclaimed mime on his 1991 European tour. He also
studied at the Paris School for Theatrical Fencing and was awarded an honorary
diploma from the French Academy of Arms. His acting credits include performances
in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," "Julius Caesar," "The Taming of the Shrew"
and "The Tempest."  
     "This will be my third production of 'Cosi' within the same calendar
year," he said. "Fortunately, it's one of my favorite operas, mainly I think
because it leaves certain questions unanswered. That gives you more room in which
to maneuver. You've got to do the thinking, and I prefer to do that in
collaboration with the cast, by having conversations with the singers during which
you come up with the possible choices in the plot's resolution."
     Hudson explained that the consistency of youth among the singers at AVA
encouraged him to eliminate any generational gap between the opera's six
characters as a distinct plot device. The four young people -- Ferrando, Guglielmo,
Dorabella and Fiordiligi -- will be manipulated by the pair of Don Alfonso
and the maid Despina, neither of whom are particularly older but are, instead,
all members of the same generation.
     "That means that we'll need to find other dynamics to motivate the
story," he explained, "such as the battle to establish equality between the sexes.
'Cosi' is the third opera Mozart composed with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte,
but in this case, there's no royal or aristocratic personage to set things
straight at the conclusion. The characters, themselves, have to decide how things
end up. It was composed just after the start of the French Revolution and it
leaves the resolution dangling."
     It was this very indecisiveness on the part of the composer and the
librettist that caused a musical personage no less august than Beethoven to
condemn "Cosi fan tutte" as "immoral" and that kept it from assuming its proper
prominence in the operatic repertoire throughout the 19th century, which was
heavily influenced by the strictures of Victorian morality. It wasn't until the
loosening up of societal standards that followed the First World War that "Cosi"
began to attract more and favorable attention from performers and audiences.
     Hudson remarked that for his first "Cosi" of 2004 he returned the pairs
of lovers to their original couplings with a knowing smile at all that had
transpired. For his second production, however, he viewed the shenanigans as
having had the beneficial effect of setting the lovers on their proper courses of
rearranging themselves with their truer loves.
     "This time around," he said, "I don't know what will happen until we've
talked it through. I think it will be interesting because, with all six of
them about the same age and level of experience, there won't be a parental figure
to make the final decision for the four young lovers."
     When asked about his decision to move the setting of the opera from its
original 1790 epoch to the late Victorian period of the 1880s, Hudson answered
that he wanted a time when women were coming into their own with which the
audience could easily identify.
     "I asked the singers to watch the film 'A Room with a View' because I'm
thinking of the two young women as English tourists on vacation in Italy
because that's where their soldier boyfriends have been stationed and why the young
men are being sent to Albania. I don't want the opera done as a parody
because that makes them all seem stupid when they're really very three-dimensionally
drawn, much like characters in a Shakespeare play. It's as though they become
their real selves once they're in Italy where they come in contact with
Nature. The girls speak of love and life blossoming in Capri like the flowers.
They're really working at the top of their intelligence. I also like the idea that
the two young men are forced to reevaluate their friendship in the light of
what it means when your best friend is flirting with your girlfriend.
     "It's all really very modern. It's what happens when young people are
away from home and on vacation. We see it today. It's anything but slapstick
comedy. It's very sophisticated."
     Hudson explained that he does most of his work with the cast as actors
apart from conductor Christofer Macatsoris, who mostly works with the cast as
singers. "But I do sit in on some of his rehearsals as does he with mine. And
both of us take into account the concerns of the cast members' individual voice
teachers. Little by little, we all come together. I like to think of myself
as a stage director who is musically sensitive even if I'm not musically
knowledgeable in a direct way. I don't ask them to do actions that make singing a
high note, for instance, something very difficult for them to do. I always want
them to be able to sing out their emotions, to each other and to the audience."
     For ticket information, call 215-735-1685 or visit www.avaopera.org.