Last night my wife and I attended a performance of Mozart’s 1791 opera, The Magic Flute, at Chicago’s Lyric Opera, part of our regular subscription. The Magic Flute is one of my favorites. I love its plot, its message. And the glorious, glorious music.
I’m not alone. Despite being by some reckonings among the most demanding operas in the common repertory from a vocal standpoint (The Queen of the Night’s aria, Der Hölle Rache, requires a high F, Sarastro’s arias require low Fs) The Magic Flute has remained in the common repertory since it premiered more than 200 years ago.
I simply adore its overture. From the opening three notes solemnly intoned by the brass to the spirited strings section that follows does any overture convey more completely the feeling that something wonderful is about to happen? In my comments on Ariadne auf Naxos a few weeks ago I mentioned that its plot consisted of an opera seria and an opera buffa being performed simultaneously. Although it is generally classified as singspiel (a play with spoken dialogue, sung set pieces), that’s a pretty good description of The Magic Flute as well with Tamino, Pamina, The Queen of the Night, and Sarastro constituting the seria with Papageno and Monostatos supplying the buffa.
Günther Groissböck’s portrayal of Sarastro was the standout performance of the evening. George Bernard Shaw once described Sarastro’s arias as “the voice of God” and Mr. Groissböck” interpretation of the part lived up to that standard. He executed the difficult arias with power, authority, and sensitivity.
Nicole Cabell as Pamina gave the typically excellent performance we’ve come to expect from her, both vocally and in terms of acting. I thought her Pamina was a bit saucier than is typical for the role—a pleasant departure in this familiar work.
I wasn’t as impressed with Audrey Luna’s handling of The Queen of the Night. I’m not familiar with her work and I don’t know whether she was having an off night or whether she simply doesn’t have the chops for the part. She accelerated disconcertingly during the passages that contained the “star-blazing queen’s” high notes and elsewhere sang off-pitch. For me, at least, the music was lost.
Through its history Lyric Opera has produced The Magic Flute six times. Over the period of the last twenty-five years it has produced this same production five times, roughly once every five years. I think it’s a charming production. A delightful production. But we’ve seen it five times over the last twenty-five years, roughly once every five years. It is becoming a bit threadbare and at the very least could use some refurbishing. Long-time Lyric audiences must certainly anticipate every gag. Or a different production might be nice.
However, old or new production and even with the flawed production we heard last night I’m glad to hear The Magic Flute again. Nowadays its messages of truthfulness, courage, forebearance, friendship, and love are very welcome indeed, especially when buoyed by Mozart’s extraordinarily beautiful music.
The season so far: The Tales of Hoffman, The Magic Flute, Ariadne aux Naxos, and, a distant fourth, Lucia di Lammermoor
My comments on Lyric’s 2005-2006 production are here.
The Critics
John von Rhein clearly saw the same things in the production that we did:
An attractive if vocally uneven cast, many of them newcomers, looked and sounded well-rehearsed in director Matthew Lata’s reworking of the late August Everding’s 1986 staging. The show’s childlike whimsy remains intact even if the physical production itself has seen better days, and the dramatic pacing now sags at times.
This is one of the oldest Lyric-owned productions still on the boards, and creating a new “Zauberflote” is something the Anthony Freud regime really should address. The many sight gags still draw laughs but now come across rather like re-gifted stocking stuffers.
His take on the various performers is about the same as mine although I think I liked Sarostro more than he did.
If anything Andrew Patner is more critical than I am:
For a newcomer to the humane 1791 masterwork written with librettist Emanuel Schikaneder, this production, staged and designed by August Everding and Jorg Zimmermann (now both deceased), and directed by Matthew Lata, is still a great introduction. The story is told clearly, the Masonic symbols and rituals are presented simply and not made too much of and it’s a rare chance to see dancing pachyderms and adorable children outside the world of the commercial musical theater. Lyric’s music director Andrew Davis in the pit conducting an uncut score offers beautiful modern-instrument Mozart with an appropriately light and characterful touch.
But for those who have seen one or more of the literally dozens of performances of this children-of-all-ages-appropriate version over the last quarter-century, it’s too much of, literally, the same, and the freshness has to come from the cast, which is itself a somewhat mixed bag.
He goes easier on Audrey Luna, however:
Following a pullout from the key part of the Queen of the Night — sort of the coloratura soprano predecessor of Darth Vader — Lyric apparently had trouble finding someone who could handle the demanding but crowd-pleasing part. I can’t blame Oregon-born soprano Audrey Luna for not being able to conquer the role in her Lyric debut. Let’s hope that new general director Anthony Freud is looking for a singer to take on these vocal acrobatics in the future as well as a new stage world for Lyric’s audience.
The Sun-Times isn’t paying for my ticket.
