The last time director Chuck Hudson helmed an Arizona Opera production, it turned into a profitable venture for the company.

For the 2013-14 season finale, Hudson created a new concept for the companyโ€™s production of โ€œDon Pasquale,โ€ setting it in 1950s Hollywood.

Fast-forward to the 2015-16 season finale this weekend, and Hudson is at it again, this time re-creating the classic Old Globe Theatre used in Shakespeareโ€™s day as a setting for Verdiโ€™s โ€œFalstaff.โ€

โ€œWe are genuinely trying to revive that Shakespearan feel by putting it on a globe stage,โ€ Hudson said days before โ€œFalstaffโ€ opened for its Phoenix run last weekend. The production moves to Tucson Music Hall for two performances this weekend.

Hudson and the same design team that created โ€œDon Pasqualeโ€ spent a year creating the globe theater for โ€œFalstaff.โ€ Audience members who buy upgraded tickets can sit on the stage, and several will be invited to be in the production, creating something of a play within a play, said bass-baritone Craig Colclough, who is singing the title role.

Falstaff has become the 34-year-old, California-based singerโ€™s signature role, portraying a character Verdi based on Shakespeareโ€™s farce โ€œThe Merry Wives of Windsor.โ€

Like Shakespeareโ€™s fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, Verdiโ€™s Falstaff courts vulnerable wealthy women, simultaneously to trick them out of their money.

Colclough, who was in Hudsonโ€™s โ€œDon Pasqualeโ€ two years ago, has done the heavy, almost depressing version of Falstaff, where the characterโ€™s obsessions and indulgences lead to his downward spiral.

He prefers Hudsonโ€™s production that โ€œsticks very closely to Verdiโ€™s score and the libretto, which at its heart is hilarious. Thatโ€™s my preference.โ€

โ€œHe acts the fool, and yet there is something so enjoyable about him,โ€ Colclough said. โ€œHeโ€™s such a dreamer, and even at the end when they have humiliated him and they find him a lecherous jerk, they are still enamored by him.

โ€œI want to share him for the rest of my life. Itโ€™s absolutely marvelous writing, the structure of him. It is such a good fit. It feels like home doing this role.โ€

This is the first time Arizona Opera has mounted Verdiโ€™s โ€œFalstaffโ€ and the first time Hudson has directed the piece.

โ€œI think itโ€™s super challenging music for singers,โ€ he said. โ€œFrom a musical standpoint, itโ€™s one of the richest things I think heโ€™s ever created. The ensembles themselves are just incredible. There are no really standard, โ€˜This is an aria, this is a duetโ€™ feel to it, which makes it feel like a standard Shakespearean production. I think it is one of the most perfect examples of the character of Falstaff.โ€


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Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com or 573-4642. On Twitter @Starburch