New 'Magic Flute' has shadows and light

[August 11, 2008]  VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Good voices, masterful music from the orchestra pit, fanciful costumes and comic touches that had the audience laughing out loud were the highlights of Sunday's new production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute."

But what happened to the message?

Every opera has one and since this opera was first performed 217 years ago there have been a myriad of interpretations for what The Magic Flute, or "Die Zauberfloete" is supposed to represent; among them a metaphor for a voyage to a loftier sphere of understanding, of yin uniting with yang, or nothing deeper than the need for life to have a higher meaning.

But if director Achim Freyer had a message Sunday it was so banal as to be meaningless.

Mozart and librettist Emanuel Schickaneder left plenty of room for laughs in this opera, which centers on Prince Tamino and the birdman Papageno, his goofy sidekick, being led through a series of trials that they must master before achieving true love and happiness.

Papageno himself is traditionally the main comic relief, and so it was in this production at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, the Vienna capital's upstart third opera house.

Jonathan Lemalu mugged his way through the more than three-hour production in fine style, presenting a masterful rendition of the hapless bird catcher whose sybaritic bent almost upends his quest for love and happiness. Gabriela Bone was the perfect foil to his Papageno as Papagena, his bride to be.

But Freyer's vision of Sarastro left the evening top-heavy in laughs and short of the gravitas needed as a counterweight to all the horsing around.

In the original, Sarastro is the high priest who guides Tamino and Pamina through a series of trials that lead them to true love and unity. Originally, he was meant to be majestic, all-knowing, almost godly, even though there have been other interpretations, depending on the director.

Reflecting the role Mozart envisioned for Sarastro, George Bernard Shaw once said that the music created for the role was the only music that could be put in the mouth of God.

On Sunday, however, Sarastro was nothing more than trite. And it wasn't the fault of Georg Zeppenfeld -- or of his warm and sonorous bass.

Freyer's Sarastro was that of a god with feet of clay -- less benign sorcerer than trite buffoon of the kind who would take pleasure in plucking the wings from a fly.

Decked out with a Stalin-like mustache and an upended Miss Liberty crown, he is a ridiculous figure, surrounded by yes men instead of wise men. He dies with a whimper in the end, and Mozart's paean to his glory is played against a darkened and empty stage.

With Freyer gutting one main character of any meaning, the hole was just too large to fill for the others -- although they tried.

Diana Damrau -- until recently of Queen of the Night fame -- was a fabulous Pamina vocally, visually and dramatically -- even though her whiteface, high-eyebrowed makeup gave her the slightest resemblance to the main character of "Scream," the movie.

Lemalu's slightly grainy baritone was the perfect instrument for this role. And although Shawn Mathey started off timidly, he grew into his part as Tamino a ways into the performance.

Sen Guo could not be faulted if she felt intimidated in singing Queen of the Night in the presence of Damrau, who owned the role for years. Still, although her voice was small, she hit all five requisite high Fs -- and performed some fancy coloratura in-between.

From the pit, Jean-Christophe Spinosi's masterful musical control added to the highlights of the evening, from the first notes of the ethereal overture to the melodic underpinnings of the action on stage all the way to the final crashing bars that bring the curtain down.

Also good: the fanciful costumes of Petra Weikert.

And Freyer did do several things right, among them deciding to put all the action in one room with three doors -- the ideal setting for the opera's main message: transition.

[Associated Press; By GEORGE JAHN]

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.