Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Die
Zauberflöte)
Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O17
Academy of Music
September 22, 2017
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| Wolfie goes to the movies. Photo credit: Robert Millard |
Lui: What if Pamina were a
Louise Brooks silent film star, Tamino her dashing tuxedoed beau, and Papageno
reincarnated as Buster Keaton with a mean whistle? The Queen of the Night a
giant spider, her ladies three pouting flapper witches! Monostatos a dead
ringer for Nosferatu and Sarastro something like the man behind the curtain
from the Wizard of Oz...
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| The Queen of the Night as a giant knife throwing spider Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Lei: With these reimagined
characters, 1927’s fantastic production comes to the Opera Philadelphia
Festival O17. We had seen videos of it but the live performance surpassed every
expectation – a pure delight from start to finish that managed to jazz up Die
Zauberflöte with an exciting design and concept. After all, this is the
perfect opera to go crazy with. Considering the imaginary world it already
conjures, the sky is really the limit! Paul Barritt’s animations
enlivened the whole thing and were always tons of fun, all while matching the
musical rhythms and illustrating the key plot points in energetic and
spellbinding ways.
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| Tamino flees the dragon with the help of projected legerdemain Photo credit: Craig Matthew |
Lui: The set was literally a
vertical blank canvas, a white wall for the uber-imaginative projections, with
singers positioned all over, from stage level to mid air, thanks to a few
little revolving platforms, so that often the characters just happened to
materialize out of thin air.
For the most part, the scenes conjured by the creative team were unpredictable and dynamic, all while (sort of) keeping the overarching contrast between the magical mysterious world of the Queen of the Night (dragons, enchantments, dangerous creatures) and the rational more “civilized” universe of Sarastro (populated by men in top hats and intricate mechanized creatures).
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| Monostatos sicks his dogs on the captive Pamina Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Lei: No words can do justice to
the sheer pleasure of this production. It must be seen to be appreciated.
However, among the most memorable moments I would include: the opening scene of Tamino hyper-kinetically running away from a charging dragon; Pamina and
Papageno making their escape by jumping from one rooftop to the next in their
flight from Monostatos; the magic bells that transform threatening wolves into
can-can dancing fools by conking them on their heads; Papageno flying around
with Walt Disney’s Dumbo-inspired pink elephants after drinking several
big pink cocktails; the use of deep sea scenes for the water trial and of a
fire monster during the trial of fire (a monster who is then turned into a big
puppy by the power of music) and so on. The highlights just don’t stop.
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| The terrifying guard wolves become dancing can-can girls Photo credit: Minnesota Opera |
Lui: The production did a
terrific job of pacing the projections with the music, including during the
most lyrical and contemplative love arias when time stops. In Act I, when Tamino pours his heart out for his beloved, he is alone in alone in a corner,
with smoky lines of female figures slowly and sinuously tracing themselves out
against the background as he sings. And when it is Pamina’s turn for her big
longing aria in Act II, she is also alone encapsulated in a snow globe, as if
to symbolize the lonely winter of her heart when she feels abandoned by her
beau.
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| Pink elephants feed Papageno massive pink cocktails Photo credit: Iko Freese |
Lei: Some animations completely
reinvented elements of the opera: the “magic flute” is turned into a little
flapper fairy in the nude who produces flowy bars of music whenever she flies
around. The silver bells given to Papageno are a troop of headless doll-like
chorus girls who jump around in formation anytime they are unleashed. Nutty.
But often also so very funny. In a way the power of those two special musical
instruments is symbolized by sassy female energy – why not?!
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| Papageno and Papagena are fruitful and multiply Photo credit: Opera Philadelphia |
Lui: But, some projections also
closely traced the libretto, as when in the famous Papageno/Papagena duet an
animation of a dollhouse appears in the background and, as they start to sing
about mating and breeding a bunch of kleinen Papagenos and Papagenas, the house
begins to sprout children in every room until it is crawling with little ones
in a veritable army of a happy family.
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| The magic flute is now a little naked fairy who emanates musical notation Photo credit: Komische Oper Berline |
Lei: The singers weren’t
entirely up to the task but the performances were nevertheless electrifying and
fast paced. One common plague of The Magic Flute are the German singspiel
passages that often come off so flat and empty in a standard production and
usually feel like unnecessarily long-winded bits that just drag endlessly on
and on.
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| The silent film intertitles enliven the singspiel doldrums Photo credit: Craig Matthew |
The 1927 production team solved for this issue with the genius
idea of drastically reducing the spoken bits of dialogue and replacing them
with silent film-style intertitles. The content of those obnoxious singspiel
narrative interstices was boiled down to a minimum amount of text projected, in
the form of very creative text art, directly onto the big screen wall and were
accompanied by additional pieces of Mozart piano music.
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| Trial by fire! Photo credit: Robert Millard |
Lui: During these interludes, the
singers were mugging in true silent-movie style with hilarious results. Also,
hearing snippets from Wolfie’s fantasias for piano reutilized, as a silent film
soundtrack, was thrilling. This approach also worked great in this new context,
felt filmic and added another dramatic layer to the drama.
Lei: The Magic Flute has never been so much fun! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, wondering what they would come up with next, often finding myself laughing in exhilarated wonder, blown away by the clever inventiveness of the production team. Refreshing and reinventing the canon? Yes, please!
– Lui & Lei
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| Things also get surreal Photo credit: Craig Matthew |
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| The three pouting flappers of the Queen of the Night Photo credit: Craig Matthew |
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| It's good versus evil and that's not always so clear cut Photo credit: Robert Millard |
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