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What should you expect from a dying composer?
Opera Philadelphia's "Magic Flute' (2nd review)
Steve Cohen
Among opera's accepted masterpieces, The Magic Flute is the most flawed. If Mozart hadn't died two months after its 1791 premiere, this piece might well have been relegated in the popular mind to a sideshow on the composer's path to greater achievements.
Mozart's symphonic and choral writing near the end of his life showed him in excellent form; but with The Magic Flute Mozart reverted to the singspiel formula from his youth, composing a German-language slapstick musical comedy and then combining it with a long commercial for a fraternal organization similar to the Society of Freemasons.
The Masonic cause glorified by the opera prided itself on its exclusivity and secrecy; the libretto boasts about the purity required of incoming members. Comments by male characters frequently demean women. These are not exactly transcendent concepts.
Give 'em masks
Yes, yes, some critics say— but The Magic Flute's silly plot can be forgiven because the music is "ethereal." Yet Mozart's earlier singspiel opera, The Abduction From the Seraglio, provides equally catchy melodies, a more exciting story and action that moves more swiftly. (The Magic Flute lasts close to three hours, and its penultimate scenes always seem interminable.)
While weighting down the comedy with a heavy message, The Magic Flute contains none of the exploration of emotions that marked Mozart's great music dramas, nor the intricate ensembles that he created for The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni.
What to do with such an inconsistent work? Some directors have cloaked The Magic Flute in gaudy Chagall costumes or Julie Taymor masks. Opera Philadelphia's current production, within its modest budget, did create some attractively colorful stage pictures.
Hard to follow
Director Ashlie Corcoran (under the tutelage of Diane Paulus, who staged it for the Canadian Opera in 2011) presented Act I as a play within a play. During the overture, aristocrats arrived in a garden that resembled the Mirabel in Salzburg (Mozart's home town) to witness Die Zauberflot performed on a small stage.
A gentleman in a long red coat, presumably the Prince of Salzburg or some such eminence, behaved like the host and later morphed into the priest Sarastro in the opera. I found this invented business hard to follow.
Fortunately, Corcoran abandoned this conceit in Act II. The small stage vanished, and now the audience saw the characters romping through the shrubbery of a large estate. The images were pretty, and most of the performers were appealing, but it still didn't make much sense.
Glittering high notes
The chief comic actor, the bird-catcher Papageno, was superbly played by Mark Stone. His baritone voice rang out mellifluously while he winked and gestured in conspiratorial fashion, taking the audience into his confidence while adeptly playing his panpipe. By contrast, Antonio Lozano as his co-hero, the prince Tamino, was tall but stiff and impersonal and his tenor voice merely adequate.
Elizabeth Zharoff, a recent Curtis alum, displayed star quality and a highly expressive lyric soprano voice as Pamina, the sweet thing who disobeys her mother, the Queen of the Night, and falls in love with Tamino.
The more famous soprano arias, of course, are sung by Pamina's mom, who otherwise has a smaller role in the action. Rachele Gilmore again displayed glittering high notes (as she did in her 2009 Met debut as the doll in The Tales of Hoffman), soaring with ease and beauty in the stratosphere, even though her characterization wasn't particularly scary.
Larger chorus?
Bass Jordan Bisch, as Sarastro, was imposing of stature and sang with fine musicianship but failed to deliver the booming low Fs that opera-lovers look forward to in Sarastro's arias.
The choristers, numbering about 15 men and 15 women, sang cleanly. I just wish there had been more of them.
Corrado Rovaris led a light and lively interpretation of the score. I've enjoyed the somber gravity of some conductors on recordings of The Magic Flute, but in the opera house I much prefer Rovaris's fleetness and bounce.♦
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
Mozart's symphonic and choral writing near the end of his life showed him in excellent form; but with The Magic Flute Mozart reverted to the singspiel formula from his youth, composing a German-language slapstick musical comedy and then combining it with a long commercial for a fraternal organization similar to the Society of Freemasons.
The Masonic cause glorified by the opera prided itself on its exclusivity and secrecy; the libretto boasts about the purity required of incoming members. Comments by male characters frequently demean women. These are not exactly transcendent concepts.
Give 'em masks
Yes, yes, some critics say— but The Magic Flute's silly plot can be forgiven because the music is "ethereal." Yet Mozart's earlier singspiel opera, The Abduction From the Seraglio, provides equally catchy melodies, a more exciting story and action that moves more swiftly. (The Magic Flute lasts close to three hours, and its penultimate scenes always seem interminable.)
While weighting down the comedy with a heavy message, The Magic Flute contains none of the exploration of emotions that marked Mozart's great music dramas, nor the intricate ensembles that he created for The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni.
What to do with such an inconsistent work? Some directors have cloaked The Magic Flute in gaudy Chagall costumes or Julie Taymor masks. Opera Philadelphia's current production, within its modest budget, did create some attractively colorful stage pictures.
Hard to follow
Director Ashlie Corcoran (under the tutelage of Diane Paulus, who staged it for the Canadian Opera in 2011) presented Act I as a play within a play. During the overture, aristocrats arrived in a garden that resembled the Mirabel in Salzburg (Mozart's home town) to witness Die Zauberflot performed on a small stage.
A gentleman in a long red coat, presumably the Prince of Salzburg or some such eminence, behaved like the host and later morphed into the priest Sarastro in the opera. I found this invented business hard to follow.
Fortunately, Corcoran abandoned this conceit in Act II. The small stage vanished, and now the audience saw the characters romping through the shrubbery of a large estate. The images were pretty, and most of the performers were appealing, but it still didn't make much sense.
Glittering high notes
The chief comic actor, the bird-catcher Papageno, was superbly played by Mark Stone. His baritone voice rang out mellifluously while he winked and gestured in conspiratorial fashion, taking the audience into his confidence while adeptly playing his panpipe. By contrast, Antonio Lozano as his co-hero, the prince Tamino, was tall but stiff and impersonal and his tenor voice merely adequate.
Elizabeth Zharoff, a recent Curtis alum, displayed star quality and a highly expressive lyric soprano voice as Pamina, the sweet thing who disobeys her mother, the Queen of the Night, and falls in love with Tamino.
The more famous soprano arias, of course, are sung by Pamina's mom, who otherwise has a smaller role in the action. Rachele Gilmore again displayed glittering high notes (as she did in her 2009 Met debut as the doll in The Tales of Hoffman), soaring with ease and beauty in the stratosphere, even though her characterization wasn't particularly scary.
Larger chorus?
Bass Jordan Bisch, as Sarastro, was imposing of stature and sang with fine musicianship but failed to deliver the booming low Fs that opera-lovers look forward to in Sarastro's arias.
The choristers, numbering about 15 men and 15 women, sang cleanly. I just wish there had been more of them.
Corrado Rovaris led a light and lively interpretation of the score. I've enjoyed the somber gravity of some conductors on recordings of The Magic Flute, but in the opera house I much prefer Rovaris's fleetness and bounce.♦
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
What, When, Where
The Magic Flute. Opera by W.A. Mozart; Ashlie Corcoran directed; Corrado Rovaris, conductor. Opera Philadelphia production through April 28, 2013 at the Academy of Music, Broad and Locust Sts. (215) 893-1018 or www.operaphila.org.
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