Uptown Looks Into Mozart’s Nasty Side Opera Company Stages Maestro’s ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’

Beethoven condemned it as frivolous and immoral. Modern feminist critics say it shows the nasty, sadistic side of Mozart. Nineteenth-century producers simply rewrote the words to make it more acceptable.

The target of all this fuss and bother is Mozart’s opera “Cosi fan tutte.” Uptown Opera will stage seven performances of Mozart’s maligned masterpiece beginning Friday. All performances will be sung in English.

The cast includes David Moore and Shaun Haywood as male leads Guglielmo and Farrando; Lisa Willson and Heather Peterson as their fiancees, Fiordiligi and Dorabella; Heather Steckler as the maid Despina, and John Cooper as Don Alfonso. James Schoepflin will conduct.

Spokane-trained baritone Frank Hernandez and soprano Jan Grissom, married in May, were originally scheduled to sing Guglielmo and Despina in the Uptown production of “Cosi.” They had to withdraw because Hernandez is recovering from surgery.

Uptown Opera productions in the past have been traditional, with time and location of the action as specified by the composer and the author of the original words.

For this “Cosi,” director Bill Graham, co-founder of the Uptown company, has made a few changes, starting with the title. Lorenzo da Ponte, who wrote the words for the opera, called it “Cosi fan tutte,” an Italian expression which literally means “Thus do they all.” For the cynical DaPonte, it means “all women do it” - that is, they change lovers at the drop of a hat. Graham titles his version “The Sport of Love.”

Said Whitworth College voice teacher Marjory Halvorsen, Uptown’s other co-founder: “Mozart and DaPonte saw this as a game of love. So we’re carrying the game idea still further.”

Games such as lawn darts, croquet and badminton figure into the production as do sports like golf and fishing. The setting of the original opera was 18th-century Naples. Uptown’s production moves the action forward a century and locates it on the Italian Riviera.

The plot involves a wager between the worldly-wise old gentleman (Don Alfonso) and a couple of young men (Guglielmo and Ferrando) as to the faithfulness of the younger men’s fiancees (Fiordiligi and Dorabella), who happen to be sisters. The “game” the older man sets up has the men is disguise with each winning the other’s sweetheart. Alfonso has an ally in Despina, the sisters’ saucy maid.

After the sisters are won over by their “new” lovers, the opera ends with the original lovers reunited. Or does it? Mozart and DaPonte leave a little room for doubt. Only Uptown’s Graham knows for sure.

Moore, who replaces Hernandez as Guglielmo, won the Italo Tajo Prize at the Cincinnati Conservatory, where he is a student in the artist-diploma program. Moore sang in this summer’s Central City Opera in Colorado and includes among his roles Belcore in Donizelli’s “Elixir of Love” and Figaro in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Steckler, Grissom’s replacement as Despina, is currently a graduate student in vocal performance at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. Stecker, a Whitworth graduate, sang in several Uptown productions, including “The Tales of Hoffmann,” “The Pirates of Penzance” and “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Willson, a New York resident who sings professionally in the United States and Europe, recently sang the role of Fiordiligi in Saverne, France. She graduated from the University of Idaho, where she studied with Dorothy Barnes.

Peterson, Uptown’s Dorabella, was this year’s Young Artist winner in voice in the Spokane Festival of Music and Allied Arts. She currently studies in the graduate voice program at Oberlin College Conservatory.

Haywood, who sings Ferrando, has sung with the opera companies in Chautauqua, N.Y., and Sarasota, Fla. He was a finalist in the 1995 Pavarotti Competition.

Cooper, who sings the role of Don Alfonso, is an Uptown Opera regular who has performed several of the company’s productions, including “La Boheme” and “The Pirates of Penzance.”

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MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Uptown Opera will present “Cosi fan tutte” at The Met Friday, Saturday and Sept. 12-13 at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m.; and Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $14, $20 and $26, available at G&B outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.