Magic Flute from Salzburg

Papageno and his Papagena

The Salzburg Marionette theater showed The Magic Flute at Mondavi Center tonight.  I especially wanted to see this since I had missed it in Salzburg.  It was enormous fun.  I can now feel my trip to Salzburg is complete.

In the puppet theater the singing was in German and the spoken words were in English. I was glad the translation was appropriately dignified and silly at the same time.  The nasty cracks about women found frequently in Flute were omitted.  Below is a link to the recorded version of the opera used for the music. 

The marionettes are about 2/3 life size.  At the end the human performers were shown to the audience, and we could see there were 8 of them.  I was especially fascinated when the characters seemed to circle one another.  How do they do that?  Their movements seemed very natural.

The marionette theater was positioned rather far back from the apron of the stage, making it difficult see.  The stage itself is much less than 2/3 the size of the average opera stage, but the action was always clear.

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