Sex, lies and high Cs

By WILLIAM DART

Now here is a plot to test PC meters. A cynical older man taunts two young chaps, saying their partners are fickle. He persuades the men to test their lovers' fidelity by going off, disguising themselves as Albanians, only to return and seduce their opposite partners.

It sounds like the stuff that reality shows are made of. In fact, it is the libretto that Lorenzo Da Ponte gave Mozart for his opera Cosi fan Tutte.

Carmel Carroll directs the NBR New Zealand Opera's touring production of Cosi, which opens its Auckland season tonight, and she is quick to credit Mozart with more intelligence than just delivering a straight message.

"Even though it looks like the moral of the story is that women are untrustworthy," Carroll says, "the machinations by people of all sexes are pretty suspect."

For her, Cosi is "a kind of growing-up process in which the characters have got to investigate things among themselves as people in love before emerging relatively safely from it all.

"I never let the wrong couple kiss," Carroll lets on, with a chuckle.

"I never let them go beyond what is forgivable."

Cosi has a long history of being tampered with, including an 1827 English travesty, retitled Tit for Tat.

These days, Mozart's music is left unmolested, although directors can present some pretty wayward takes - Calixto Bietio's 2000 production for Welsh National Opera set it in the sleazy ambience of a sex club.

"But I don't think it's about sex, as much as it's about the young people's feelings for one another," Carroll argues.

"They're basically innocent and they make a journey of discovery about themselves throughout the opera."

Carroll is based in Glasgow, although the mezzo has returned to New Zealand over the years to deliver dashing comedic turns in NBR NZ Opera productions of La Cenerentola and Falstaff.

Her first taste of directing came in the early 90s when she joined Class Act Opera, taking kitset productions around secondary schools and discovering "kids who were so hungry for opera - the process, the package, the high notes and asking questions like how did you make it that loud without a microphone? I got hooked by their innocence".

The experience has stood her well for Cosi. Like last year's Barber of Seville, which she also directed, Cosi is touring the country from Takapuna to Greymouth. One of its aims, she stresses, is "to generate a new audience for opera in this country".

The intimacy, especially in the smaller venues, means that "when you become close to an audience they start to breathe with you. It's the weirdest thing - a sort of organic union. When they laugh and clap it all generates more and more energy until it gets to be like a party."

Touring to 14 different venues in just under two months means the set has to be transportable and the ingenious set designer John Parker is once again a godsend.

"John never thinks inside the square and always has a way of telling me why my problems aren't really problems," Carroll says. "He's been inspired by Maxfield Parrish and it is all very Mediterranean romantic.

"It may not be a period set, but then the actions are to do with the emotions of the characters, not about whether there's an alarm clock on the shelf."

Similarly, Elizabeth Whitehouse's costumes are "period-inspired but not period-limited. The silhouettes are very 1790".

For all her theatrical flair, Carroll is a musician and, like any singer, has her reasons for Mozart being such a challenge.

"He always flirts with the edges of voice that are slightly difficult to manage," she observes. "He never sits the voice in an easy place so you must have a very good vocal technique to sing it well.

"And if you're a young person singing Mozart you can get into trouble because you are just not old enough to know what's going on."

Performance

* What: Cosi fan Tutte

* Where and when: SkyCity Theatre, tonight, and July 1-3; Bruce Mason Centre, Takapuna, July 6-7; Founders Theatre, Hamilton, July 9