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.
