Die Zauberflöte in HD

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Conductor:  James Levine
Production/Costume and Puppet Designer:  Julie Taymor

Pamina:  Golda Schultz
Queen of the Night:  Kathryn Lewek
Tamino:  Charles Castronovo
Sarastro:  René Pape
Papageno: Markus Werba
Speaker:  Christian Van Horn

Nadine Sierra was our announcer today for Mozart's Die Zauberflöte from the Met, and she did a fine job.  She has charisma to burn.  Julie Taymor's production of The Magic Flute first played in HD with cuts and in English in 2006 and has replayed since then. This performance was for those of us who love this opera in German.  It was lovely to hear the original words in an uncut version.

It is interesting to me that in his final year of life Mozart wrote two operas about forgiveness.  Die Zauberflöte and La Clemenza di Tito.  Perhaps it was for us.  This is Kurt Moll.  In this holy hall we don't speak of revenge.



Out of the cast listed above, only Markus Werba was completely new to me.  His Papageno was a joy.

Kathryn Lewek was in Cecilia Bartoli's Ariodante which I very much wish I had seen.  She was outstanding here.

Golda Schultz appeared in the La Clemenza di Tito from Salzburg this past summer. Pamina suits her better.

Charles Castronovo has appeared a few times in San Francisco.  My favorite outing from him was Il Postino with Placido.  His voice is robust for Tamino, but I agree with his comments--he enjoys a heroic sounding Tamino.

Everyone knows the one and only René Pape who flew over just for this performance.  He's the best now.

I love the Julie Taymor production and enjoyed seeing it again.

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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Flute at the San Francisco Opera

Wednesday night was the opening of The Magic Flute at the San Francisco Opera.  This is yet another occasion when I'm glad I'm not a real reviewer.

Above is a picture of Albina Shagimuratova as The Queen of the Night.  The top is the three ladies slaying the dragon and saving Tamino.

A couple of curious facts:  the set is computer graphics mostly in colored lines and shapes, such as those behind Albina, and the English translation is by David Gockley himself.  Did I want an English translation?  Not really.  When there is spoken dialog in an opera it is very annoying to teach people to say the lines well.  The other side of the coin is that the words and the notes accompanying them never quite gel into a complete musical interpretation.  This is especially due to the fact that there is a different translation each time. 

I liked Albina best.  Nathan Gunn was wasted.  The director didn't think of anything much for him to do.  Nadine Sierra as Papagena had the most charisma.  The children's version from the Met may be my favorite Flute.  Sigh.

As we were leaving the opera house, I heard the words "Giants" announced over the loudspeaker.  When I got home, I looked to see what was going on with the Giants and found that Matt Cain had pitched the 22nd perfect game in the history of major league baseball and the first ever for the Giants.  San Francisco is such a great city.

Julie Taymor's Magic Flute

Pamina:  Ying Huang
Tamino:  Matthew Polenzani
Queen of the Night:  Erika Miklósa
Sarastro:  René Pape
Papageno:  Nathan Gunn

I'm writing about the rerun of Mozart's The Magic Flute in HD from the Metropolitan Opera because I missed it the first time around.  I am out of the loop so I didn't realize it was in English.  I've seen Flute in English before and found the whole thing offensively misogynistic.  Someone was always making insulting cracks about women.  They've edited all of that nonsense out, and no one missed it.  The plot made the most sense it ever has.  Hear, hear for Mozart in the 21st century.

The biggest problem with doing Flute in English, especially for the non-native speakers, most of the cast, is that they are coached so thoroughly on pronouncing English that the musical legato suffers.  For that reason this is not the most musically satisfying Flute.  For the singer language and phrasing are intimately joined.  It isn't enough to say it right.

Mozart was an enthusiastic free mason and Julie Taymor's production uses a lot of masonic symbols, pyramids and so forth, things that mean little to the ordinary person.  Visually it is a treat.  The most effective parts of the production come with the bird elements that surround Papageno and the three boys.

Nathan Gunn as Papageno shines. He is charming, cute, athletic and a good singer. What more could you possibly want?

I enjoyed the fairy tale vision, and the conducting of James Levine.  In fact there was a lot to like.  It was over in under 2 hours.

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Diana Damrau

She isn't credited in this ad for the ROH, but it can only be the incredible Diana Damrau. Needless to say, she nails this.