THE MAGIC FLUTE

Opera in 2 Acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder

Performance on Saturday, 14th January 2012 in the Opera Theatre of the Sydney Opera House.

Conductor                            Jonathan Darlington

Director                                Matthew Barclay, based on the original production by Julie Taymor

Scenery Designer              George Tsypin

Associate Scenery Designer               Tijana Bjelajac

Costume Designer            Julie Taymor

Puppetry designers          Julie Taymor, Michael Curry

Lighting Designer           Gary Marder, based on the original design by Donald Holder

Choreography                   Matthew Barclay, based on the original choreography by Mark Dendy

Tamino                             Andrew Brunsdon

First Lady                        Jane Parkin

Second Lady                   Sian Pendry

Third Lady                     Tania Ferris

Papageno                       Andrew Jones

Queen of the Night      Suzanne Shakespeare

Pamina                           Nicole Car

Monostatos                   Kanen Breen

First Spirit                     William McDermott

Second Spirit                Matthew Phillips

Third Spirit                   Jusi Jenssen

The Speaker                 Stephen Bennett

Sarastro                        David Parkin

First Priest                   Malcolm Ede

Second Priest              Samuel Dundas

Papagena                    Kiandra Howarth

Armoured Men          Sam Roberts-Smith and Clifford Plumpton

Opera Australia is now taking a new approach to the Summer Season in Sydney, presenting a summery festival of operatic treats aimed squarely at tourists, the Sydney Festival crowd and a younger audience still revelling in the final weeks of school and university holidays. What better work to commence this journey than with a new production of THE MAGIC FLUTE. Opera Australia impresario, Lyndon Terracini has scored quite a coup in obtaining the rights to mount a second production of the Julie Taymor MAGIC FLUTE,  first staged at the Metropolitan Opera, New York in 2004. To the horror of the now legendary but imagined ‘audience club’, the production has numerous musical numbers cut and is sung in English (Oh Horror!), to present a friendly and easily consumed staging for children and those new to opera – operas future audience.

Mozart’s arguably last or penultimate opera was devised by Mozart and Schikaneder as a singspiel for performance for the everyday person in a Public theatre rather than a commissioned work for a royal court theatre. I suspect he would have thoroughly approved of any minor tampering to ensure the work remained relevant to it’s audience and continued to entertain. But the number of cuts is beyond the realm of minor tampering. It is hard to accept that new, young audience members would have disapproved of hearing the overture played by an orchestra in the theatre for the first time.

Musical numbers jettisoned from the work to reduce the playing time and progress the action include the overture, Pamina’s suicide aria, the Pamina/Papageno duet, a few second verses and the canon-like duet for the two Armoured Men. As much as I love some of these pieces, the cuts worked in delivering a coherent and fluid telling of the story with little injury to the piece. I must admit to often feeling that I too as an audience member was participating in one of the trials of the work during the performance of the second act, which often seems interminable in performance. Not so in this production where the cuts during the second act worked wonders in pacing the action. No doubt performances of the FLUTE in future years in some other production will see these numbers re-instated for the purists, but to my mind the purists should be happy to have such a thoughtful and delightful production to attract new opera lovers to the art form they hold so dear.

The production delivers a truly magical MAGIC FLUTE with bucket loads of humour, colour, glorious costumes and shimmering sets transporting  the audience to another world. A 10 metre long serpent running along a catwalk in front of the orchestra pit, women with removable heads, a giant goose flying over the stage transporting the three spirits, puppet birds and polar bears add treat after visual treat. No less the extremely different, novel and fresh conception of the costumes, makeup and scenery. A large, central cube of shiny steel and perspex continually rotated, evolved and transformed into scenic wonder after another every few minutes for the different scenes, while Egyptian characters and hieroglyphs adorned numerous act cloths added additional splendour. The staging told the story well with delightful and additional, very broad, ocker humour, yet allowed for most of  the messages of the masonic scenes to ring true. The only failings of the production were an overproduced ending to the first scene when stillness during the sublime quintet that ends this scene may have been more appropriate, an ill-conceived Queen of the Night who was plainly dressed, lacked any real terror and whose musical numbers were hampered by fussy movement of triangular wings on her costume, and a most unimaginative staging of the trials of fire and water.

Musically the production was in the expert hands of Jonathan Darlington from the Vancouver Opera, a frequent visitors to these shores, and a superb cast.

The performance was so uniformly well cast it is difficult to single out any standout singers. Andrew Brunsdon so often either mis-cast or unable to realise his full potential, was on this occasion vocally and dramatically a shoe-in as the heroic prince Tamino. Singing with freedom, a beautiful vocal timbre and fine line throughout his entire vocal range he was the best Tamino I have heard in a long while. He cut a fine heroic figure on stage, and was thoroughly convincing. Andrew Jones added yet another exquisitely sung and dramatically convincing role to his repertoire. His resonant voice, athleticism and dramatic gifts were well displayed. His characterisation of Papageno however lacked some of the humour innate in the roll. Another singer with amazing vocal gifts is Nicole Car (Pamina) – such a pity that her suicide aria and duet with Papageno (probably the dramatic heart of the opera) were cut. David Parker’s Sarastro, tall, majestic, authoritative and vocally resplendent, was the best Sarastro we have seen since the late Donald Shanks. Again such a shame the second verse of his aria  ”In diesen heil’gen Hallen” was cut.

Although Suzanne Shakespeare easily had all the notes and was vocally accurate for the two fearful arias of the Queen of the Night, she was dramatically hampered by a lack of drama for her two entrances, an overly fussy costume, and a voice too light and lacking drama for the role. The role of Monostasos dressed in a repugnant fat suit was hilariously performed and suavely sung by Kanen Breen. Jane Parkin, Sian Pendry and Tania Ferris gave us one of the finest trios of Three Ladies ever to tackle a serpent and seduce a Prince.

No praise too high can be given to the three boys/spirits assembled for this production. William McDermott, Matthew Phillips and Jusi Jenssen were vocally accurate, extremely personable, great little actors and each had beautiful and strong voices. They were truly a delight.

Stephen Bennett in the smaller role of the Speaker was opulent casting. Kiandra Howarth as Papagena acted delightfully but was less successful vocally in a gift role. Smaller roles of the 2 Priests and 2 Armoured Men (with little left to sing) were all well cast.

The Opera Australia Chorus was stunningly costumed, and equally stunning vocally, delivering sublime singing for the magnificent choruses of the work.

Although the proposition of presenting a cut MAGIC FLUTE is controversial – it works ! It is superbly staged and sung and 10 out of 10 to the OA for having the guts to present it in English.