Die Zauberflöte - Semperoper Dresden, 1 March 2013
Imagine genetically-modified Teletubbies frolicking in a giant children's colouring -book, and you've got Achim Freyer's Dresden Zauberflöte, revived for what must be about the 100th time. Originally seen at the Schwetzinger Festspiele, it's the designer/director's third production of the opera closest to his heart, though you'd be hard-pushed to find much difference between each one.
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Have ENO had an unprecedented attack of common sense and finally called time on their endless pursuit of the youth market?
Thank you to reader Susan for spotting that High50 ("Age has its benefits") has an ENO offer in the form of two-for-one Upper or Dress Circle tickets for The Magic Flute on 13, 21, 23 or 26 September.
You don't have to be over 50 to apply. Just book online, using the code HIGHFLUTE at checkout.
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Die Zauberflöte - Felsenreitschule, 30 July 2012 (Salzburg Festival)
If you could sum up the Salzburg Festival in one word, it would be 'quality'. Ticket buyers stump up vast sums in the expectation they will hear the world's best musicians playing the greatest music ever written in immaculately conceived and presented performances. Leave the merely 'promising' to others.
So while there's nothing hugely wrong with this Magic Flute, its ordinariness comes as a disappointment. Staffed largely by new Intendant Alexander Pereira's old Zurich Opera cronies, it has all the bland efficiency of the Swiss rail network.
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The fantasy:
The reality:
The stage is set (well, almost) for Seefestspiele Berlin, a new outdoor opera festival opening in a few days time on the shores of Lake Wannsee. The organisers originally envisioned a Bregenz-style aquatic extravaganza, with their Katarina Thalbach production of Die Zauberflöte set on a mid-lake pontoon. But after the Berlin council and local environmental protestors stuck their oar in, the venue was shifted to a lakeside parking lot with a watery view.
Construction of the vast set, a Masonic-style one-eyed pyramid, continues in parallel with rehearsals. Meanwhile the unforgiving Berlin rain lashes down on performers and construction workers alike.
Despite the fact that tickets are issued with an anorak advisory warning, the organisers claim to have shifted over 30,000 so far.
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A Magic Flute - Barbican Theatre, 23 March 2011
Proof that even geniuses have off days. Peter Brook's A Magic Flute (note the indefinite article) is the great director's interpretation of Mozart's Zauberflöte.
Pared down to the absolute minimum, he believes it throws an intimate and spiritual light on the masterpiece. What it actually does is stick a bunch of wispy-voiced young singers in a forest of portable garden canes with naught but a piano in support.
Secondary characters like Boys and Ladies are excised. Spiel is trimmed and en français. A couple of dreadlocked actors (the only real sign of life) are employed to patch up the holes left by all this snipping and shaving.
The result is a bore and a half, with a mildly nauseating aura of hushed reverence about it. Mozart's music is the beating heart of his opera, not an optional extra. Brook of all people should realise this. Or perhaps he does - the show runs at 90 minutes without an interval - so no escape for the terminally enervated.
The Barbican had the cheek to charge up to £50 for tickets. You could find something considerably livelier at any pub opera night - and with better singing.
This is an opera I love beyond reason, and it can stand up to a lot of abuse - think of the brilliant South African version at the Young Vic a couple of years ago. Peter Brook goes a cut too far.
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Die Zauberflöte - Royal Opera House, 1 February 2011
While no performance of Die Zauberflöte ever really disappoints, this latest revival of David McVicar's bitty production is strangely deflated.
Continue reading "Royal Opera House Flute needs more Magic" »
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The Magic Flute - Opera Holland Park, 28 June 2008
Last week, Simon Callow told the FT that The Magic Flute "should be represented in every possible different way”. I doubt if he meant to add “in the same production”, but that’s how his version for Opera Holland Park emerges.
Perhaps he's been thinking about it so long that just has too many ideas to stick on one stage and make a coherent statement. Or is it simply that he hasn't had enough time to rehearse it into shape? Whatevs, at least it's done with warmth and affection, and a reasonable fidelity to the score. It's certainly not Callow's intention to disembowel Mozart and reassemble him in his own image. And teh Flute's clean and ruthlessly linear narrative as ever defies any directorial fudging. No-one ever comes out of a Magic Flute and says they didn't understand the story.
Unlike most Opera Holland Park productions, this one's performed in an English translation. The singing part was serviceable enough, not nearly as excruciating as some of the ENO's efforts. But if the intention was to perk up the spoken sections, it shoots itself in the foot by teasing out the (unwisely uncut) dialogue with lame end-of-the-pier jokes. The chat just went on and on, till I almost forgot I was watching an opera. It was more like pub theatre with the odd tune.
To be fair, the talky stuff is what Callow's really, really good at, and he coaxed some excellent speaking performances from a cast who've been trained primarily to sing. But Flute-loathers accusations of "panto" kept leaping obsinately to mind. Not to mention that singers' speaking voices don't project like their singing ones, and seated towards the back, with the chill June wind blasting in one ear and the bleeding peacocks in the other, I simply couldn't hear some of it.
Callow's best trick was a simple but bold one - to empty the stage. OK, there was a rather ugly and pointless cutout tree stuck there for the first act, but once that was carted off, all we had was a bright squiggly floor painting and some hieroglyphics on the back panel. Subtracting one layer of distraction lent some degree of coherence to scenes and characters that often seemed to have sprung in from different productions.
And the lighting helped, though it wasn't really powerful enough to cut through the bright daylight that still pervaded the first act. Entrances and exits (of which many were thundering dashes through the auditorium) weren't always flawlessly timed, but the principle was sound, and the attention was clearly focussed on the action. And with a bizarrely broad range of costumes (was everyone allowed to pick their own or something?) at least it was easy to tell all the characters apart.
Musically, the standards were amongst the highest I've heard at OHP, with conductor Jane Glover taking the honours for the crisp performance she drew from the City of London Sinfonia.
Jonathan Gunthorpe, a late replacement as Papageno, reprised the comic flair he recently showed as Leporello in English Touring Opera's Don Giovanni, despite adopting a strange gumby accent. His Papagena, the tiny Pippa Goss, didn't get to sing enough to make much of an impression either way, but her transformation from tubby gran to tweety pie was spectacularly effective.
Andrew Staples' Tamino needed a bit more dash to command the stage, but he was earnest and likeable, with only the occasional strained note to mar his singing.
There could be no doubt about Fflur Wyn's origins, her Welsh accent shaping every note. She struggled to characterise Pamina in the first act, but settled into an exquisitely lyrical performance in the second. I suspect these two will develop and improve even more as the run continues and their assurance grows.
Penelope Randall-Davis is the finished product. She has the Queen of the Night nailed. Although her lower register wasn't always firm, the higher she went, the more comfortable she sounded, and in her sculptured fifties frock and madly winged eyeliner (with her three ladies gowned to match) she cut a malevolent figure.
References to the colour of Monostatos's skin were delicately expunged from the translation (another reason for translating, I wonder? ...it's a difficult nut to crack), enabling the part to be credibly if hyperactively played as a leering straggle-haired ringmaster by Mark Le Brocq.
His slaves, gowned head to toe in jiggling dishmop dreads, looked spectacular. Their sudden transformation from vicious bullies to docile formation dancers at the sound of Papageno's bells was one of the most delightfully executed moments of the whole night. But like so much in this production, it had nothing to do visually or otherwise with anything around it, and seemed content with spectacle at the expense of anything deeper, in this case the blindingly obvious congruence of music and liberation.
Tim Mirfin did his best as Sarastro, but his lyrical lower register and twiglet physique (not to mention his Rudolf Valentino costume) were never going to lend him the gravitas the role requires. More of a miscast than a misfire.
It's a messy production alright, and there's plenty to pick fault with, but I'd still go back for seconds. Such is the magic of Mozart.
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Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) - Royal Opera House, 31 January 2008 and 7 February 2008
As Die Zauberflöte is one of my all-time favourites, and as the Royal Opera House has seen fit to assemble a 'B' cast so strong it should more properly be called just an 'alternative' cast, I decided I just had to see this production twice.
Admittedly it's not the most coherent or stimulating of productions. David McVicar tries just a little too hard to appeal to all corners. There's a lot of olde-style set dressing and costumery for the traditionalists, but enough anachronistic modern touches to counter any accusations of stodginess. The spoken sections are faithfully retained in full, in all their tedium, but any racist overtones are swindled out by recreating the black Monostatos as an ageing white fop. Man-held creatures offer a half-hearted nod to 18th century theatrical practices that isn't followed through or even integrated properly . And there's plenty of cleavage and thigh boots for anyone who doesn't care about any of the above. It's the eclipse of enlightenment by popular entertainment. Give me Nicholas Hytner's beautiful, thoughtful and inexplicably-retired ENO production any day. But Mozart has survived worse, and while the production may be superficial, it is at least not irritating. And it thrilled plenty of Amazon reviewers on its first, DVDd for posterity, outing.
In the first cast, Simon Keenlyside's Papageno stood head and shoulders above the rest of the cast - as much down to weaknesses in their performances as strength in his. Rolling and tumbling like a trained acrobat, singing beautifully of course, his presence animated every scene he was in.
Christopher Maltman offered a different, and in many ways more touching Papageno in cast B. While there's something almost slick about Keenlyside's clowning, and something crafty about his evasions, Maltman offered a simpler, more vulnerable character, more of a witless fool buffeted about by life's complications. I admired the skill of Keenlyside's portrayal of Papageno, but I warmed more to Maltman.
When it came to the central couple of Tamino and Pamina, there was less of a contest. Cast A's Christoph Strehl and Genia Kühmeier would seem on this showing to be fine singers, and I look forward very much to Genia Kühmeier's debut recital at the Wigmore Hall in April . But neither had a great deal of presence, nor, it seemed, enough direction/rehearsal to get them much past the shuffling and hand-wringing stage. In Strehl's case, he took a very long time to get going vocally, with only his final aria really having the projection to reach my amphitheatre eyrie.
Cast B's Pavol Breslik and Kate Royal were in a different class. Tamino is a notoriously drippy role in the wrong hands. It takes real presence and charisma to make something of it, and Breslik asserted himself at once. The dashing charm and the big bright voice were perfect. Kate Royal's Pamina simply glowed. Aside from some intonation problems in her first aria, she gave a sparky, vital performance. These two were, properly, at the centre of the performance every time they were on stage.
The first Sarastro, Stephen Milling, is a singer I admire hugely, but I found him untypically subdued and unassertive in this role. Sarastro #2, Hans-Peter König, definitely shaded it in terms of dramatic presence, but neither really disappointed in any way.
Queens of the Night Erika Miklósa (in the A cast) and Anna Kristiina Kaappola (in the B) were both fabulous. Miklósa displayed greater ease with the coloratura (it was evident Kaappola was at top stretch), but Kaappola was a more vital and vengeful stage presence. The all-round greater dramatic prowess of the second cast made me wonder if they'd maybe benefitted from more rehearsal time than than the first set - certainly they all seemed to have a clearer idea of what they were supposed to be doing.
Kishani Jayasinghe (Papagena), the one constant in all casts, made the most of her brief part and suffered her '80's discowear bravely. Her acting skills weren't quite adequate compensation for the ineffective 'old lady' disguise of her closing scene, and as a result this was rather confusing, but she sang prettily and had terrific comic timing.
Other parts were very strongly cast all round in both performances, right down to the bisto-kid three boys, beautifully sung each time.
Roland Böer conducted both times, vibrantly and confidently. Co-ordination between stage and pit was perfect, and if the orchestra played a note wrong, then I didn't notice it. Why, I may even have to go back again.
Pavol Breslik as Tamino with teh mother-in-law: 
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