Silberglöckchen, Zauberflöten
Jan. 30th, 2008 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pallas_athenaRecently I was lucky enough to step out with a friend to Covent Garden for the opening night of die Zauberflöte.
The ROH and ENO have both staged revivals of The Magic Flute this year; ENO publicised theirs as the last-ever outing for Nicholas Hytner's 1988 production. The thing is: ENO have no cash, and that production's been a stalwart of theirs for years. I can't really see them daring to retire it unless they're very confident of whomever they've got lined up to do a new one (Jonathan Miller? Zandra Rhodes again? Who the hell knows?)
Covent Garden's production isn't as stark as ENO's: there's more colour, more adornment, a little more gilding. Nothing like the glitz of some American productions, but a restrained, understated beauty (with occasional horrible lapses, such as the awful costume they stuck Papagena in. That's her in the top photo. What were they thinking?)
Actually, I know what they were thinking. They were thinking "Ooh, let's do something a bit different" and then, typically, didn't have the balls to follow it through. So Papagena, rather than first appearing as an old crone, becomes a sort of raddled prostitute-figure-- but not one that's in any way dangerous or sexually threatening, so her transformation into the girl of Papageno's dreams is much less defined, much less powerful.
See, The Magic Flute is all about love that sees beyond the surface. When Tamino is handed the miniature portrait of Pamina, he falls instantly in love with it-- with an appearance only. Similarly, when the artificially-aged Papagena appears to Papageno, he's instantly revolted. Before she ever sees Tamino, Pamina falls in love with the sound of his flute; at first sight, the two instantly recognise each other. But it's not enough: he needs to know her, she needs to trust him. As for Papageno, there isn't a hope in hell of him seeing past Papagena's appearance: she has to threaten him with imprisonment and death before he'll grudgingly take her hand. The minute he gets a clue, the temple guardians rightly snatch Papagena away from him, and only then does he realise what he's lost. Without the guidance of the Three Boys to set things right, Pamina and Papageno would both die the unenlightened lover's lonely death.
Costume-wise, the designs in this production use period styles to demarcate the various character groups: Tamino, Pamina, Sarastro and the initiates are various eighteenth-century flavours; Papageno and Papagena are modernish. The Queen of the Night and her Ladies are in black strappy floor-length evening gowns, their "otherness" emphasised by wigs that, well... I know the point was to make them look un-human and desexualised and frightening, but the more ignoble part of my mind kept murmuring "refugees from Babylon-5." Still, kudos to to the capably-sung Queen of newcomer Erika Miklósa.
Luckily, the sets are more successful. There are some beautiful nods to the Enlightenment: an onstage orrery, a celestial sphere. Most of the set-dressing is done by the dancing chorus: the animals (including a Jim Henson-style bird who steals Papageno's first aria right out from under him) are puppets manipulated by chorus members; the moving chorus also, less successfully, portray the flames and waves in the climactic trial by fire and water. When you've got two men in fantastic da Vinci-esque armour belting out that amazing chorale-- Mozart's inspired homage to Bach-- you want real fire and water to back it up.
For me, the most difficult thing about this opera is the gender politics. The "enlightened" Sarastro's views on women certainly make me sympathetic to the Queen's desire to see him knifed. In this production it's made clear that after Monostatos's umpteenth rape attempt on Pamina in Act II, Sarastro has a bit of an epiphany. Whoever was doing the supertitle translation rendered it as a quote from Shakespeare, Prospero on Caliban: "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." Sarastro's all-male Brotherhood of Wisdom may have germinated minds like the benevolent, paternal Speaker, but it has also allowed the slave-driving, woman-tormenting Monostatos to flourish. Sarastro pontificates early in the opera that a woman alone is incapable of realising her destiny, but by his own logic, a man alone-- such as himself-- must also be a failure. Tamino alone couldn't be Sarastro's heir; Pamina stands by him, goes through the initiate's trials with him, and will rule the Temple of Wisdom alongside him, daughter of the Queen of the Night as she is.
I realise that from "girls are eeevil and st00pid" to "single people are incomplete and doomed" isn't much of a step up, but it's something: a small victory for love and mutuality over suspicion and division. It was enough to bring a smile to my face, anyway, as I sat and listened to Mozart's music, which outdoes Schikaneder's words a thousandfold. I love this opera: I love the ensembles, the harmony writing, the beautiful subtle weaving of it. I love the patterns, the recurrences, the transformations, the transcendences. I've sung these ensembles; they're old friends to me, and no matter what kind of day it is, they fill me with a sort of calm joy. I could carp about the rough, perfunctory conducting, the inaudible lower lines among the three boys and three ladies, but the truth is that there's no such thing as a perfect rendering of any work of art: we can only perceive works of genius through the lens of human flaws.
You can tell I'm still in the Mozart afterglow. Normal superficial snarkiness will resume shortly. In the meantime, kudos to Genia Kühmeier for a beautifully-sung Pamina, Stephen Milling for a powerful, gentle Sarastro, and Simon Keenlyside for a natural, agile, energetic Papageno. Here's an interview with Keenlyside about the production, with pictures. (Yes, that's a duck on his head. In opera, this is perfectly normal.)
The ROH and ENO have both staged revivals of The Magic Flute this year; ENO publicised theirs as the last-ever outing for Nicholas Hytner's 1988 production. The thing is: ENO have no cash, and that production's been a stalwart of theirs for years. I can't really see them daring to retire it unless they're very confident of whomever they've got lined up to do a new one (Jonathan Miller? Zandra Rhodes again? Who the hell knows?)
Covent Garden's production isn't as stark as ENO's: there's more colour, more adornment, a little more gilding. Nothing like the glitz of some American productions, but a restrained, understated beauty (with occasional horrible lapses, such as the awful costume they stuck Papagena in. That's her in the top photo. What were they thinking?)
Actually, I know what they were thinking. They were thinking "Ooh, let's do something a bit different" and then, typically, didn't have the balls to follow it through. So Papagena, rather than first appearing as an old crone, becomes a sort of raddled prostitute-figure-- but not one that's in any way dangerous or sexually threatening, so her transformation into the girl of Papageno's dreams is much less defined, much less powerful.
See, The Magic Flute is all about love that sees beyond the surface. When Tamino is handed the miniature portrait of Pamina, he falls instantly in love with it-- with an appearance only. Similarly, when the artificially-aged Papagena appears to Papageno, he's instantly revolted. Before she ever sees Tamino, Pamina falls in love with the sound of his flute; at first sight, the two instantly recognise each other. But it's not enough: he needs to know her, she needs to trust him. As for Papageno, there isn't a hope in hell of him seeing past Papagena's appearance: she has to threaten him with imprisonment and death before he'll grudgingly take her hand. The minute he gets a clue, the temple guardians rightly snatch Papagena away from him, and only then does he realise what he's lost. Without the guidance of the Three Boys to set things right, Pamina and Papageno would both die the unenlightened lover's lonely death.
Costume-wise, the designs in this production use period styles to demarcate the various character groups: Tamino, Pamina, Sarastro and the initiates are various eighteenth-century flavours; Papageno and Papagena are modernish. The Queen of the Night and her Ladies are in black strappy floor-length evening gowns, their "otherness" emphasised by wigs that, well... I know the point was to make them look un-human and desexualised and frightening, but the more ignoble part of my mind kept murmuring "refugees from Babylon-5." Still, kudos to to the capably-sung Queen of newcomer Erika Miklósa.
Luckily, the sets are more successful. There are some beautiful nods to the Enlightenment: an onstage orrery, a celestial sphere. Most of the set-dressing is done by the dancing chorus: the animals (including a Jim Henson-style bird who steals Papageno's first aria right out from under him) are puppets manipulated by chorus members; the moving chorus also, less successfully, portray the flames and waves in the climactic trial by fire and water. When you've got two men in fantastic da Vinci-esque armour belting out that amazing chorale-- Mozart's inspired homage to Bach-- you want real fire and water to back it up.
For me, the most difficult thing about this opera is the gender politics. The "enlightened" Sarastro's views on women certainly make me sympathetic to the Queen's desire to see him knifed. In this production it's made clear that after Monostatos's umpteenth rape attempt on Pamina in Act II, Sarastro has a bit of an epiphany. Whoever was doing the supertitle translation rendered it as a quote from Shakespeare, Prospero on Caliban: "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." Sarastro's all-male Brotherhood of Wisdom may have germinated minds like the benevolent, paternal Speaker, but it has also allowed the slave-driving, woman-tormenting Monostatos to flourish. Sarastro pontificates early in the opera that a woman alone is incapable of realising her destiny, but by his own logic, a man alone-- such as himself-- must also be a failure. Tamino alone couldn't be Sarastro's heir; Pamina stands by him, goes through the initiate's trials with him, and will rule the Temple of Wisdom alongside him, daughter of the Queen of the Night as she is.
I realise that from "girls are eeevil and st00pid" to "single people are incomplete and doomed" isn't much of a step up, but it's something: a small victory for love and mutuality over suspicion and division. It was enough to bring a smile to my face, anyway, as I sat and listened to Mozart's music, which outdoes Schikaneder's words a thousandfold. I love this opera: I love the ensembles, the harmony writing, the beautiful subtle weaving of it. I love the patterns, the recurrences, the transformations, the transcendences. I've sung these ensembles; they're old friends to me, and no matter what kind of day it is, they fill me with a sort of calm joy. I could carp about the rough, perfunctory conducting, the inaudible lower lines among the three boys and three ladies, but the truth is that there's no such thing as a perfect rendering of any work of art: we can only perceive works of genius through the lens of human flaws.
You can tell I'm still in the Mozart afterglow. Normal superficial snarkiness will resume shortly. In the meantime, kudos to Genia Kühmeier for a beautifully-sung Pamina, Stephen Milling for a powerful, gentle Sarastro, and Simon Keenlyside for a natural, agile, energetic Papageno. Here's an interview with Keenlyside about the production, with pictures. (Yes, that's a duck on his head. In opera, this is perfectly normal.)