SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mozart, The Magic Flute:  (Revival Premiere) Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, Gareth Jones conductor, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 15.2.2008 (GPu)


Conductor: Gareth Jones
Original Director: Dominic Cooke
Revival Director: Benjamin Davis
Set Designer: Julian Crouch
Costume Designer: Kevin Pollard
Lighting Designer: Chris Davey

Cast:
Tamino: Russell Thomas
First Lady: Camilla Roberts
Second Lady: Anne-Marie Gibbons
Third Lady: Joanne Thomas
Papageno: Neil Davies
The Queen of Night: Laure Meloy
Monostatos: Howard Kirk
Pamina: Rebecca Evans
First Boy: Carwyn Harris
Second Boy: William Davies
Third Boy: Robert Alder
Speaker: David Stout
Sarastro: David Soar
A Priest: Simon Curtis
Papagana: Claire Hampton
First Armed Man: Philip Lloyd Holtam
Second Armed Man: Martin Lloyd
Actors: Joseph Grieves, Brendan Purcell, Robert Wilson

In his classic book on The Operas of Mozart (1977) William Mann tells an interesting and amusing story: “He [Mozart] attended a performance next day, 8 October, when a Bavarian acquaintance in the same box (the Freihaustheater had two tiers of boxes) annoyed Mozart by laughing and applauding even in the serious scenes; as a result Mozart went backstage and played Papageno’s Glockenspiel. ‘So I played a trick. At one point where Schickaneder has a pause I played an arpeggio – He was startled – looked into the wings and saw me – when it came the second time – I didn’t play one – then he stopped and refused to continue – I guessed his thoughts and played another chord – then he hit the Glockenspiel and said, ‘Shut up!’ – everybody laughed at this – I believe that many people, as a result of this joke, realized for the first time that he does not play the instrument himself.”

Mozart was annoyed by an acquaintance who “laughed …  even in the serious scenes” of the opera. Dominic Cooke’s production too often invites – or at least too easily risks – the audience’s laughing “even in the serious scenes”. One of the extraordinary things about this very extraordinary opera is the subtlety with which (to simplify) it employs a main plot from the realms of opera seria interwoven with a subplot from Viennese comic tradition; the joint quests of Tamino and Papageno, the one to save Pamina and the other for the ‘salvation’ of (any) suitable wife, allow us to compare and contrast two version of love and heroism: individual scenes work this way, so that Pamina’s near suicide is parodically echoed by Papageno’s. Mozart’s sense of the relationship between ‘serious’ and ‘comic’ is very subtle – as subtle as Shakespeare’s. But he never allows us to forget that the two are importantly different. We are never invited to laugh at Tamino or Pamina or the temple of the Sun. Mozart was annoyed by the Bavarian acquaintance who did.

But begin a production by having Tamino (in a multi-doored room rather than a rocky landscape) attacked, not by the symbolic serpent, but by a giant lobster whose extremities poke in through two of the doors and you risk (invite?) titters from the audience. Dress up the followers of Sarastro in long frock coats and bowler hats and give them umbrellas to carry and brandish and you set up all sorts of inappropriate associations (even the Masonic ones suggest too simple a view of what Sarastro’s brotherhood represents) so that even having their outfits (and accessories) sun-coloured hardly makes it easy to ignore those unhelpful associations. If you also have them spend much of their time with only their heads (and bowlers) protruding above stage through trap doors, you make it hard not to think of them as figures from a Samuel Beckett drama rather than adherents of belief-system based on love. The whole thing has about it the air of postmodern relativity – a refusal to accept that one thing might be more valuable than another and a desire to ironise everything. The obvious allusions to surrealist art assist in this effect.

Nor is the many-doored box of Julian Crouch’s set altogether helpful. Too often it domesticates actions and ideas, too often it seems to confine concept and possibility. Robbed of a sense of space, of contrasts between inner and outer worlds, natural and man-made, the story becomes a rather claustrophobic psychodrama. Production concept and stage set alike (and some of the costuming) feel as if they are fuelled – not necessarily consciously – by a desire not to celebrate (or even acknowledge) the heroic.

 

Pamina: Rebecca Evans and Papageno: Neil Davies

A shame, because this was, for the most part, a pretty satisfying Flute, musically speaking. The Three Ladies work well as a trio (one of the works many triads, of course), figures trapped at the level of trivialised sensual desire, Rhine Maidens turned into parlour maids (one half expects them to carry off the dead lobster to the kitchen for the cooks). All three singers produced an attractive flirtatiousness of voice and playfulness of manner. As their mistress, Laure Meloy tackled the demands of the Queen of Night with admirable vocal security, if not quite (yet – she is young) with the sheer brilliance of the greatest interpreters of the role. Neal Davies relished the role of Papageno, and got better and better as the evening went on, gathering both vivacity and humanity as his ‘fate’ unfolded. As his Papagena, Claire Hampton exuded just the kind of healthy and innocent sexuality calculated to appeal to Papageno and the two duetted delightfully.

David Soar seemed to inhabit the role of Sarastro with more confidence and certainty of purpose in Act II, after a slightly shaky start at the end of Act I, when his voice was rather pinched and confined. As he opened up vocally, so his capacity to dominate the stage increased; even so, he was inevitably fighting a losing battle (against costume and set) to convince us that he was a figure occupying the pinnacles of human wisdom; his Temple was, not unexpectedly, a room of many doors (and trapdoors), largely indistinguishable from every other setting in the opera.

Russell Thomas was a sturdy Tamino, rich in voice, if not always quite as flexible or expressive as one might ideally hope the interpreter of this role to be. Yet his vocal range was considerable and his control of his vocal resources always secure. The straightforwardness of his manner, in terms both of acting and singing, effectively emphasised Tamino’s essential honesty and bravery, his bewilderment at much of what happens to him, for all his innate sense of right and wrong. As Pamina, Rebecca Evans sang with a maturity and (appropriate) sophistication well beyond that of any other member of the cast. She was perhaps the only character who involved the audience emotionally, and the rich beauty of her voice had both certainty and flexibility, at top and bottom alike.

Though the production had it pluses – not least in a few striking moments of comic invention – what we saw on stage only rarely seemed to illuminate (or even cooperate with) the vision of Schikaneder and Mozart. A friend said to me afterwards: “I enjoyed it very much once I shut my eyes”. Perhaps a little extreme as a reaction, but I could see his point.

Glyn Pursglove

Pictures © Johann Persson

Back to Top                                                    Cumulative Index Page