Director Jonathan Miller enjoys Brooklyn's cosmopolitan audience and the BAM Harvey Theater.

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Mozart has remained at the core of the classical repertory for more than two centuries because of all composers it’s he who has most felicitously transformed every emotional state - from sadness to extreme pleasure - into accessible, beguiling music.

Nowhere is this more true than in Mozart’s operas, and his quartet of masterpieces in this genre make still-pertinent commentary on relationships.

"The Magic Flute" shows two lovers successfully overcoming trials that threaten their life together; "The Marriage of Figaro" finds joyfulness in even the most troubled relationships; "Don Giovanni" explores the darker side of our personalities, as a sworn womanizer chooses death over redemption; and "Cosi fan tutte" - the most troublesome, and troubling, Mozart opera - intones that "All Women Are Like That."

Like what?

Find out at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as a fully staged production of "Cosi" is unveiled in the comfy confines of the Harvey Theater April 24 through May 4. Performing one of Mozart’s most delectable scores is the Brooklyn Philharmonic under Robert Spano’s baton. And directing is Jonathan Miller, no stranger to Mozart’s stage works, having helmed "Cosi" in five different productions.

"It’s the opera I’ve directed more than any other, I think," Miller told GO Brooklyn while on a short break from rehearsals Monday. "It’s an extremely intelligent, interesting piece about human nature."

Miller is also no stranger to controversy, interpreting many of the jewels of the operatic repertory in a fashion that the more staid audience members and critics regard as contempt for the form and its tradition.

In this "Cosi" production, Miller emphasizes the music and story over lavish sets.

"The nice thing about this is it’s completely naturalistic," said Miller. "It’s a complete absence of what I call ’opera shtick.’ It’s just perfectly normal people that you recognize as being yourselves.

"With a piece like this, it’s not about scenery. It’s about interactions between people. It’s very elegant and beautiful to look at, but it’s not spectacular scenery. What it is," said Miller, "is elegantly formal."

At BAM, Miller’s newly revamped production of "Cosi" is, typically for him, atypical: the singers, although they’re clothed in obviously contemporary designer duds - the women’s costumes in soft spring colors have been donated by Eileen Fisher from her 2003 collection - move about in spaces that don’t betray any specific time and place.

"Like Covent Garden, it’s the first one I’ve done in modern dress, in modern times," said Miller. "It’s a piece that unlike ’Marriage of Figaro’ or ’Don Giovanni,’ translates into modern life with effortless ease. There’s no reference to a social world, which you have to acknowledge; whereas ’Don Giovanni’ and ’Figaro’ are set in the 18th century, in a world of rank and title and social hierarchy, which really doesn’t happen in this at all."

The libretto for "Cosi" was written by Lorenzo da Ponte, who also created the librettos for Mozart’s "Figaro" and "Giovanni," and hence must be counted as one of the most successful collaborators in all of opera.

"Cosi fan tutte" is more problematic than the highly comic shenanigans of "Figaro" and the tragicomic peregrinations of "Giovanni," following two sets of seemingly happy and faithful couples who find their loyalty and their love placed under a powerful microscope.

Ferrando is betrothed to Fiordiligi, and Guglielmo to her sister Dorabella. The conniving Don Alfonso makes a wager with the two officers that their lovers are like all other women - fickle - and will fall for any man. The ladies’ maid Despina helps Alfonso in his scheme, and soon both women are engaged to two new suitors - their fiancees in disguise.

On the surface, the plot of "Cosi" is not unlike the confusions informing Shakespeare’s comedies or even Mozart’s own operas like "Figaro." But audiences for many years found "Cosi" immoral and frivolous, a story too far beneath the genius of Mozart, and so it languished for some time, only recently finding a foothold in the repertory.

Miller, of course, is a staunch defender of Mozart’s story and deems the behavior of the characters to be human rather than immoral.

"Immoral because the girls seem to behave badly? But then so do the men," said Miller. "It’s not immoral. [Today,] we are much more tolerant of the varieties of human behavior.

"You can play it frivolously, but actually it gets more and more serious and becomes quite tragic towards the end. It’s about discovering alternate versions in yourself that you didn’t suspect until you disguise yourself.

"It’s about the dangers of pretending to be someone else. It’s about identity; it isn’t about fidelity," he said. "It’s such a brilliantly elegant piece that it’s a great pleasure to reconstruct it again and again."

The ambiguity of "Cosi" has since become its strong suit: it’s an opera that can be interpreted in more ways than any other Mozart stage work outside of "The Magic Flute."

Since it deals so directly with matters of the heart, "Cosi" can withstand any sort of deconstruction. A recent Metropolitan Opera production was turned into a star vehicle of sorts for mezzo Cecilia Bartoli, who sang the comic-relief role of Despina: at one point, Bartoli was seen pulling one of the opera’s sets onto the stage, as if it was she who was the motor that drove the entire enterprise.

For Miller’s production, Despina is sung by the veteran American soprano Helen Donath, and Sir Thomas Allen - who returns to BAM with the Brooklyn Philharmonic in May to sing Verdi’s magisterial comic masterpiece, "Falstaff," for the first time - takes the role of the sly Don Alfonso, who sets the plot machinery in motion.

Miller, too, is returning to BAM having directed a Glimmerglass production of Monteverdi’s "L’incoronazione di Poppea" here in 1996 and productions of "St. Matthew Passion" in 1997 and 2001.

Miller, formerly director of London’s Old Vic Theater, is clearly a fan of the BAM Harvey Theater and Brooklynites.

"This is now the fourth time I’ve been here," he said. "It’s the most wonderful natural, informal theater. It’s the most marvelous décor such a wonderful elegant ruin.

"It’s an audience that is highly informed and aware of what we’re doing in Europe, whereas other opera houses are more conventional, and audiences come in order to applaud the scenery," Miller added.

An intriguing international cast of young, up-and-coming singers makes up the pivotal quartet of "Cosi": American tenor Eric Cutler and British baritone Garry Magee are the men, while Canadian soprano Alexandra Deshorties and Israeli mezzo Rinat Shaham portray the women.

But the real star is - as always - Mozart, whose endlessly inventive and varied vocal ensembles are among the most sublime he ever composed.

There’s no higher praise.

Additional reporting by Lisa J. Curtis.

Mozart’s "Cosi fan tutte" will be performed in Italian with English surtitles at the BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St. at Rockwell Place in Fort Greene on April 24, 26, 28, 30 and May 2 at 7:30 pm, and May 4 at 3 pm. Tickets are $35, $60 and $90.

A Bamdialogue with director Jonathan Miller takes place April 24 at 6 pm in the BAMcinematek, 30 Lafayette Ave. at Ashland Place. Tickets are $8. For more information, visit www.bam.org.

©2003 Community Newspaper Group