The Green Issue
It is not entirely inappropriate that the musical score was the star of this beautiful sounding production.
Of the three great operas Mozart wrote with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, Cosí fan tutte has the most challenging characterizations. In Figaro and Don Giovanni, you can simply plug in good voices, and the operas make themselves. OK, that's a ridiculous exaggeration, but there is truth there, whereas the roles in Cosí demand greater subtleties of acting to fully flesh out. The trick is to capture both the exciting flush of young love and the confusion of emotional betrayal that ensues. In student productions, the former qualities are regularly conveyed with brio. It is the messy politics of love that present the challenge, as was the case in this AVA production.
A pair of happy young couples is introduced to the powers of jealousy, lust and infidelity by a cynical older couple. As with Shakespeare, the comedies of Mozart always have a dark side. In Cosí, as the drama proceeds, so does an accumulation of shadings of the characters. By the time we get to the heart of Act II, as one of the young women, Fiordiligi, sings the magnificent aria "Per Pieta," there is a full-blown emotional crisis. All of the AVA singers, with vibrant and beautiful voices, contributed to this sense, but did not render the depth and even anguish that lurks just beneath the jovial surface. That will come as these superb young voices mature.
AVA music director Christofer Macatsoris has long since demonstrated his ability to breathe life into Mozart scores, with boldly shaped phrasing and dramatic insight. The full production, directed by Damon Nestor Ploumis, seemed somewhat cramped and busy, but that is hard to avoid at the Lilliputian, if beloved, Helen Corning Warden Theater. Da Ponte gave Mozart a universal and timeless story, with a cast neatly divided into even sets of three pairs, but it was the genius of Mozart thatbrought all of the elements into a cohesive whole, and so it is not entirely inappropriate that the musical score was the star of this beautiful sounding production.
Mozart's Cosí fan tutte
Through Nov. 17, Academy of Vocal Arts, 1920 Spruce St., 215-735-1685, avaopera.org
AVA's Cosí also runs Nov. 27 and 29 at Centennial Hall, Haverford, and Dec. 1 at Central Bucks East High School, Holicong.
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