Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte
Scottish Opera, 2019
Tobias Ringborg, Thomas Allen, Peter Gijsbertsen, James Cleverton, Julia Sitkovetsky, Gemma Summerfield, James Creswell, Adrian Thompson, Jeni Bern, Bethan Langford, Sioned Gwen Davies, Sofia Troncoso
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 27th June 2019
There are many reasons why The Magic Flute is considered to be a marvel of opera and any one of them is a good enough reason why you should never pass up an opportunity to see it. There are many ways of looking at the work, it's capable of being presented in any number of ways and there's always the potential to reveal many fresh perspectives. You could say the same about any mature Mozart opera of course but Die Zauberflöte has such a variety of tones and challenges that ensure that when you get it right it's dazzling. The Scottish Opera production is definitely that.
It's even worth going to see the same production that you might have already seen before, because what makes the Scottish Opera Magic Flute special is how it takes advantage of all those many facets of Mozart's genius that go into this work, but above all it makes you smile. This same production was last presented in Belfast seven years ago and my recollection was that it was a memorable production for its visual look and presentation more than any radical insights or interpretation is forgotten, but I had forgotten just how entertaining it is and really just how brilliantly it captures and transports Mozart's genius across the centuries.
Sir Thomas Allen's steampunk setting didn't seem so important this time. It doesn't really invite any consideration or reveal any great insights into the work. If you want you can see it as a bold alternate-world look at what the future could potentially be/have been, of the necessity to be prepared to face change in the world. The armoured men scene and final trials bring you back to those themes, Mozart's belief in the betterment of humanity through change, enduring the challenges and hardships that come with it but with trust, faith, love, steadfastness and truth they will be equipped to endure what lies ahead in the future. So it's in there in the production and it's certainly welcome to have something to think about amidst all the ritual Masonic nonsense of the second half, but it's by no means the central point of this production.
The setting suggests something else that is important to help humanity get through the challenges of what lies ahead, and that's music. The fairground attraction aspect of the Scottish Opera production does bring the work back to its popular Singspiel music hall roots, and to the ideal of music as entertainment. It's called The Magic Flute and music does charm the savage beasts in the work. Between them Mozart and theatrical entrepreneur Emmanuel Schikaneder know exactly what makes people tick and know what they want, and they give it to them in this work. And Thomas Allen's Scottish Opera production brings that out superbly.
But there's much more to Die Zauberflöte than that; there are a whole variety of musical tones to the work, from ceremonial to playful, from joyous to the depths of despair. Conductor Tobias Ringborg and the cast ensure that all these moods are catered for here. Julia Sitkovetsky's Queen of the Night was superb, bring all the vocal fireworks, Gemma Summerfield stood out as a much stronger Pamina than we usually find in this opera (as sign of the times maybe), her 'Ach, ich fühl's' impressive, measuring the highs and lows of her character's experience. It's not so much the clichéd roller-coaster as much as a demonstration of the range and ability of Mozart and his capacity to express, understand the whole range of human experiences and qualities, conflicts and doubts.
While all the various aspects of the work are well catered for, it's humour that takes precedence. In comparison to the 2012 production, where Nicky Spence brought a more down-to-earth quality and knowing humour to the proceedings, Peter Gijsbertsen is a rather more traditional earnest straightman Tamino to Papageno and James Cleverton took full advantage of this. If Scottish Opera's Die Zauberflöte almost becomes the Papageno show however, it's not without justification, as Papageno is the one figure who brings out that essential spirit and recognition that all of us, any one of us can be better.
Papageno is the ordinary person amidst all these grand figures; he's not so brave, not so perfect and he can speak without thinking and make mistakes. He literally speaks directly to the audience, and - in dual role as Master of Ceremonies - he even tips a nod and a wink to the audience that reminds us that we don't need to take it all too seriously. Maybe with companionship, food, wine and maybe even a metaphorical drug of choice now and again we have all the nourishment one needs to enjoy the magic of life. And the magic of music too, which of course is present and an essential part of Papageno's world.
There aren't many operas that can carry that kind of message of universal importance in such an entertaining form that brought the house of the Grand Opera House in Belfast to it's feet. Personally, I had a grin plastered on my face all the way through. This was a very welcome return of the Scottish Opera's 2012 production of The Magic Flute, and I'd definitely go and see it again in another seven years time. Heck, I'd happily go and see it again tomorrow.
Links: Scottish Opera
Richard Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos
Glyndebourne, 2013
Vladimir Jurowski, Katharina Thoma, Thomas Allen, Soile Isokoski, Kate Lindsey, Laura Claycomb, Dmitri Vargin, James Kryshak, Torben Jürgens, Andrew Stenson, Sergey Skorokhodov, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Ana Maria Labin, Adriana Di Paola, Gabriela Iştoc, William Relton, Frederick Long, Michael Wallace, Stuart Jackson
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
The purpose or indeed the true worth of Ariadne auf Naxos isn't always immediately identifiable. Like Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella and Capriccio, the opera is partly a homage to opera and older forms of music and in how they clash with a more modern sensibility, and partly it's an experiment with style and form. Musically and poetically - even in its pastiche of "music hall" - it's clearly a work of exquisite beauty and sophistication, but isn't it really just a frivolous exercise that's overly contrived and ultimately inconsequential? Ariadne auf Naxos however has not only remained enduringly popular over the years but in spite of the apparent limitations of its construct it has also proved to be remarkably open to exploration, reinvention and reinterpretation.
Ariadne auf Naxos, of course, is only silly and inconsequential if it's allowed to be and only if it's played either too straight or too much for laughs. It's easy to underestimate it on the basis of its central conceit, which is a bit of an inside joke. The Prologue is set at the house of the richest man in Vienna who has commissioned the performance of two operas for his dinner party, one a rather heavy opera seria on a classical subject 'Ariadne auf Naxos', the other an opera buffa 'The Fickle Zerbinetta and her Four Suitors', a vaudeville comedy "with song and dance and a plot as clear as day". Due to an unavoidable change in the schedule for the evening's entertainment however, it's been decided that they now only have time to put on both works before the firework display at nine if they are performed simultaneously. The second part of the opera after the Prologue then is the "hilarious" clash between two works that seem to have nothing in common, but which remarkably work together to create something extraordinary.
The coming together of high art and low entertainment to reach out and say something meaningful to an audience then is the "message" of Ariadne auf Naxos. This can be summed up in an early exchange between the conflicting sides over how to bring the two works together. Discussing the Princess Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus and her abandonment on a desert island, her situation is described as "Wracked with yearning she longs for death", to which the rejoinder is "Death? What she really wants is another man." And in essence Zerbinetta's deflating of the lofty expressions of Ariadne's self-indulgent grief does reflect the belief that life's difficult questions may indeed be found in life's simple pleasures. Does the opera however really need so much artifice to deliver such a simple sentiment?
Well, Ariadne auf Naxos is about the transformative power of love, the creation and realisation of one's dreams and illusions, the creation of "little gods", and in a way that's what opera does too. It's not life, it's an artificial construct, but it's one that nonetheless contains essential truths, real emotions and feelings, and packages them up in a way that communicates directly to the listener through the magic of music and stagecraft. It's the stagecraft then - the sets, the lighting, the performances - that determines the success of Ariadne auf Naxos (or indeed any opera), and in terms of its presentation directed here brilliantly by Katharina Thoma for Glyndebourne 2013, the opera communicates to the audience everything it ought to.
The WWII period setting for this Ariadne auf Naxos has proven to be controversial in some parts - which I find hard to believe. In reality it's fully supportive of the themes of the work and its opera within an opera conceit by cleverly placing its country estate setting within the country estate setting of Glyndebourne. More than just being a clever self-referential idea however, Katharina Thoma makes the essential conflict within the opera work by relating it back to an issue that plagued Strauss and his librettist Hugh von Hofmannstahl through most of their working lives - the question of the split between the world of the artist and reality. As his career as a German composer spanned two world wars, this was a particularly thorny question for Strauss, whose neo-Classical style was regarded by many as being frivolous in the context of what was going on elsewhere in the world at that time, and even out of touch within the world of music.
Whether the artist has any responsibility for what goes on in the wider world or whether they should remain above politics and remain concerned with essential universal questions of human nature is debatable, but Strauss' work must be judged on its own terms and a good production - like this Glyndebourne one - can draw out those personal conflicts within it. It's not difficult to see the deeper question of Strauss' personal dilemma in the character of the Composer and his horror of the desecration of his glorious work of art - "Why drag me from my world into this?", he asks, and Thoma intelligently highlights this question by setting it against his reaction to the reality of the war breaking out during the Glyndebourne performance. The end of the Prologue sees fighter planes fly over the stately home, bombs explode and masonry falls from the ceiling onto the stage.
The actual performance of the two operas combined takes place subsequently in the same stately home that has now been converted into a field hospital for the wounded locals. The Composer can be seen wandering around throughout, his lofty dreams about the purity of his art in tatters. The correspondence however between his work and reality is - thanks to the insight provided by this production - plain to see. Ariadne awakens in an improvised hospital in the stately home to question "Where am I? Am I dead?", looking around her at the destruction created to conclude that "This can't be called living". Looking like a WWII entertainment company, Zerbinetta and her suitors however represent the spirit and tenacity of the ordinary citizen to pull through, no matter how bleak the situation, and they rally behind her.
Zerbinetta's chirpy optimism however and her welcoming of each new opportunity as a god in her coloratura aria is seen here as a kind of PTSD induced delirium. She is given a sedative by the nurses (Naiad, Dryad and Echo) and wrapped in a straight-jacket. Her words and her spirit nonetheless have a transformative effect by the time Bacchus arrives and the Composer watches this transformation occur in his Ariadne, seeing the truth of the situation through new eyes. Very cleverly characterised as a heroic fighter pilot here, shot down in the dogfight over the estate - a "Captain", a god raised indeed by "nurses" - Bacchus resists Ariadne's despair for "eternal rest" as she fumbles in his jacket for his pistol, and does indeed offer her the promise of a new world arising out of the horrors of the current reality. Even the Composer here is overawed by what his creation has revealed to him.
This is simply marvellous characterisation that gets right to the heart of the work's sentiments, while at the same time illuminating the deeper truths that lie in its construction. The power of art, theatre, music and - very specifically - music and opera to transform and illuminate reality is exactly what Ariadne auf Naxos sets out to demonstrate. There's nothing frivolous about it. And if the stagecraft helps brings these elements out, the performances are no less critical to getting the message across. Soile Isokoski is a soaring Ariadne; Sergey Skorokhodov a heldentenor Bacchus; Kate Lindsey is an intense Composer who sings marvellously and even makes her presence felt in the second part; Laura Claycomb is a sparkling Zerbinetta. Conducting the London Philharmonic, Vladimir Jurowski draws out the delicate beauty of the opera's reduced ensemble instrumentation, tying its deceptively simple melodies accurately to the tone and the intent of the production.
The Blu-ray presents the production well with a sharp, colourful video transfer and good sound mixes in LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 that reveal the quality of the singing and the orchestral playing. The usual Glyndebourne extra features give a good overview of the design and concept and the challenges of putting on a work like this. Jurowski is particularly impressed at how much insight into a difficult work this production achieves. The disc is BD50, region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The Magic Flute
Scottish Opera, 2012
Ekhart Wycik, Sir Thomas Allen, Nicky Spence, Claire Watkins, Rachel Hynes, Louise Collett, Richard Burkhard, Mari Moriya, Laura Mitchell, Jonathan Best, Peter Van Hulle
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 1 December 2012
If you want to, you can consider The Magic Flute to be a complex work, and with all the qualities that make up the complex personality and musicianship of Mozart placed within it, it most certainly is a work of incredible richness and variety. Written however with Emanuel Schikaneder as a popular Singspiel, what Die Zauberflöte should be above all else however is witty, charming, funny and entertaining. It has a serious side of course, and a meaningful message to put across - and it does get a little bogged down in solemnity on occasion - but it's the means by which those ideas are put across that is essential to the brilliance of the work. Comedy, in The Magic Flute, proves to be a much more effective means of getting that across. And music - but I'll come to that as well.
The light-hearted side of Mozart in Die Zauberflöte can often be undervalued and underrepresented, but the Scottish Opera's production - seen here in Belfast at the end of the tour on 1st December - gets the balance just about right. That's a tricky balance to maintain in this work. How, for example, do you account for all the mysticism, the Masonic initiation rituals and grand solemn ceremonies that undoubtedly underpin most of the enlightened ideals that make up the fabric of The Magic Flute, while at the same time making it accessible and entertaining to a modern audience? How do you reconcile the Tamino and the Papageno? Mozart does the hard bit through his remarkable music, showing love to be the most ennobling and life-affirming act that any human being is capable of, but finding a way to make that work in a setting that accounts for all the trappings of the Masonic rituals is a more difficult prospect for a modern production.
Directing for the Scottish Opera, Sir Thomas Allen's idea isn't a bad one, setting the story up as a kind of fairground show in a Victorian "Steampunk" setting with gentlemen in stovepipe hats, operating pulleys and clockwork mechanical constructions. Visually it's a delight, creating the right kind of 'magical' background that accounts for freaks and animals, smoke and mirrors, but the steam engineering also feels utterly appropriate to the idea of human ingenuity, progress and man's ceaseless endeavours to better himself. It doesn't go all the way to differentiate and clarify the natures of the opposing forces of the Queen of the Night and Sarastro, or establish where dragon slaying fits into the picture, but it's more important to provide a suitably "fun" setting that better engages the audience and allows the story to flow in a relatively consistent manner.
And who better to engage with the audience than Papageno? Well, the Scottish Opera played an interesting trick in making Tamino a regular member of the audience also, picked out sitting in the Circle by a spotlight during the overture and invited to join in the fun on the stage. Tamino can be a little too earnest a figure to entirely identify with, so some pantomime-style banter with the audience on the part of both Tamino and Papageno - and engaging performances from Nicky Spence and Richard Burkhard - helped break down those barriers between the characters and the audience, which is really what The Magic Flute is all about. It's about showing what noble sentiments and actions any man is capable of, whether Prince or fool. Or indeed woman.
Much scorn is poured upon womankind in The Magic Flute, no doubt in line with Masonic tradition - but Mozart's truly enlightened attitude (and I'm sure his love for women) shows that they also have an important part in directing the progress of all mankind on to better things. If there's any doubt about the work's intentions towards women, one need only listen to the remarkable music that Mozart scores for the female figures. The masculine characteristics are straight, direct and measured in both their nobility and, in the case of Papageno, playfulness, but the women bring a wildness, an unpredictability and a sense of abandon - most notably in the case of the Queen of the Night's coloratura and range, but also in the sentiments that plunge Pamina from the heights of love to the depths of despair within the span of minutes, a descent that was handled well in this performance by Laura Mitchell.
All of this is part of what The Magic Flute is about, so in addition to making it look engaging and entertaining, it needs to musically take you on this journey, and on all accounts the Scottish Opera's production was sympathetic to the rhythms and moods of the piece. There were a few curious lapses in tempo that, for example, drained the intensity both from the Queen of the Night's entrance and from Sarastro's grave pronouncements. If they were to give the performer's room to approach the demands of their ranges, it may have been necessary, but Mari Moriya and Jonathan Best didn't seem to have too many problems in these tricky roles. All of the main performers then managed to strike that balance exceptionally well, matching the tone and sentiments of Mozart's writing, and they were well supported by the rest of the cast, with a strong trio in the three Ladies, but also the exceptionally beautiful harmonies produced by the three Boys for this performance.
If there were any minor concerns about the limitations of the fairground setting or in the singers meeting the exceptionally high standards of the work's vocal demands, it's more the spirit and the heart of Mozart's music that is essential to getting the wonder of The Magic Flute across, and the Scottish Opera's heart was in the right place here.
