An Evening at the Opera

Well, this wasn't the Met or la Scala, but the Austin Lyric Opera. I went to their production of The Magic Flute (one of only three operas they will give this season, the other two being Lucia di Lammermoor and Turandot) at the Long Center in Austin, expecting to be entertained, if not awed by the quality of the performances, and I was pleasantly surprised. This seemed to me to be a solid production, although perhaps one that was more faithful to the playfulness that this work often displays that to the profound philosophical ideas and the actual drama that play in parallel with the facetiousness.

Most of the singers were quite good. An advantage of a younger troupe, without major stars, is that it's nice to have a Pamina (Hanan Alattar) who doesn't look like she should be singing a Walkyrie instead, and a Tamino (Arthur Espiritu) whom said Pamina can credibly fall in love with.

I realize that The Magic Flute is partially a moral tale, and partially a comedy, and so one may take oneself too seriously by critiquing some absence of gravitas at the right moments, but that's what I felt was missing most.

Sarastro was sung by James Moellenhoff, who according to the program hails from Germany and therefore had a very clear diction of the German words, although all the singers did very well with their pronunciation. He was perhaps the most compelling singer, with a forceful bass and an imposing stage presence, aided by the props and the costumes appropriate for his regal character. By contrast, the Queen of the Night (Juliet Petrus) was a little thin-voiced. She was not the looming and ominous presence you expect, and her hair and makeup didn't help -- more commedia dell'arte than it should have been. The opera only gives her two real chances to shine, and her first aria was not convincing. Der Hölle Rache was good, but still did not reach the piercing vengeful screams that the situation calls for. Her third appearance is very brief (the failed attack on the temple) and the staging made this scene appear rushed, giving her no chance to make a last impression.

Papageno was very well done... perhaps more compelling as the comic character than Tamino was as the chivalrous hero, an impression consistent with my earlier comment about lack of gravitas. Another instance of this came after Pamina's suicide attempt. The three spirits have just told her that she will see Tamino again, and that he loves her, and he is going to face death during his initiation rites in order to conquer her. At that point, Pamina and the three spirits act on stage as if she had only heard the first part of the sentence. They sing and dance and jostle each other, Pamina seems positively giddy when you would expect a more complex mix of hope and fear for the well-being of her beloved.

The decor was very sparse -- a series of connected platforms and a set of vertical moving panels bathed in a vague pastel lighting. This was alright for most of the opera, but fell through toward the end. After you have seen at least once how Bergman simulated the walks through fire and water in his superb cinematic rendition (1975), anything that doesn't trick your senses into imagining these elements is disappointing. Here, the gestures made by the priests in their robes to simulate fire or water, and the lack of depth of the stage didn't even imply that the protagonists were being tested in any way. Surely some light or screen effects could have helped save these scenes. Similarly, the Queen's attack and defeat gave no sense of drama.

The supertitles had multiple problems. On the positive side, you can see them even from the first row of the Michael and Susan Dell Hall. Of course you have to look way up, but you can read them. I've heard that this is not the case everywhere. But the timing was off at a couple of incongruous moments. At the end of Pamina's despair aria, the title switched prematurely to the first sentence of the following scene between Tamino and the priests, so it read "O Isis and Osiris, what joy!" while Pamina was still singing of her broken heart. At another point, the titles were too late. And during Papageno's count to his own (half-hearted) suicide attempt, the famous "zwei... zwei und halb... zwei und drei Viertel... drei" was not translated at all. The oddest supertitle moment came earlier, just after Papageno has subdued Monostatos and his slaves thanks to his magical glockenspiel. I still can't decide if the double entendre was intentional or accidental, but some in the audience did chuckle when they read above the stage: "If all men had such bells..."

Speaking about translation, the opera was sung in German but the dialogs were spoken in English. I'm sure this was helpful to the audience, and it wasn't  dramatically jarring (except during the first spoken scene, between Papageno and Tamino, when it surprised and distracted me for a while), but I think I still would have preferred everything to be in German.

In spite of the relative length I gave to the negatives, this was a thoroughly enjoyable performance -- several very solid singers, good staging, a good musical performance, and a great sense of timing in the more comic moments. The fact that the ALO seemed more competent, in this work, during the lighthearted moments than the serious ones will be tested during the other two operas of their season, where comic relief isn't exactly called for.