United Kingdom Mozart, The Magic Flute: Soloists, Actors, Refrain and Orchestra of English Nationwide Opera / Erina Yashima (conductor). London Coliseum, 28.2.2024. (CSa)

Die Zauberflöte or The Magic Flute was composed and first carried out in Vienna in 1791, 5 months earlier than Mozart’s premature demise. Set to a textual content by Emanuel Schikaneder and billed as a ‘comedy with machines’, it’s a advanced and puzzling fairy story through which pantomime, low comedy, and complex symbolism mix with divine music to supply us a profound commentary on the beliefs of the Enlightenment and the reality of the human situation. Up to date accounts of the unique manufacturing describe unique costumes, magnificent surroundings and props which included illuminated pyramids, fire-spitting mountains and waterfalls. It additionally featured a star-studded throne for the Queen of the Evening; a completely feathered chicken catcher, Papageno, with reside caged birds; a stunning cushion-filled Egyptian room prepared for slave grasp Monostatos to aim a seduction of the opera’s heroine Pamina, an elaborately gilded temple, a triumphal carriage for the Excessive Priest Sarastro, drawn by six lions, a moonlit bower of flowers the place Pamina lay sleeping, and a rose adorned flying machine through which three cherubic boys have been transported.

In stark distinction, Simon McBurney’s 2012 darkly ingenious model for the Dutch Nationwide Opera, revived a 3rd time for the English Nationwide Opera by Rachael Hewer, is performed out by singers and actors who – with the notable exception of Papageno – are wearing sombre black or gray. The setting is simplicity itself. The motion takes place on or round a tilting adjustable platform jutting out from what first seems to be an empty black void. Members of the orchestra, liberated from the pit, seen, and really a lot a part of the motion, are seated simply in entrance of the naked stage. As quickly as they strike up the overture and the houselights dim, it turns into obvious that the cavernous house behind them is only a clean canvas on which set designer Michael Levine and his colleagues in lighting and sound, ingeniously undertaking and amplify their dystopian however no much less spectacular imaginative and prescient of Schikaneder’s mystical setting. The result’s a triumph of the creativeness.

Two kiosks flank the empty stage. In a single we see video artist Ben Thomson at work, his screened hand chalking up on a blackboard the variety of every act or spelling out the placement of every scene in time to the music. Papageno is surrounded, not by a swarm of fluttering birds, however by a workforce of nimble-footed actors, holding items of rustling paper over their heads. The doorway to Sarastro’s citadel is nearly represented by an impregnable wall of vintage books beamed onto the backdrop, with titles resembling Nature, Knowledge and Cause embossed on their leather-based spines. The Temple inside is a monochrome boardroom the place sober-suited committee members, not clergymen, vote on the insurance policies of their chairman, Sarastro. The rigorous board-approved ordeals which Tamino is pressured to bear to show himself worthy of Sarastro’s company kingdom and Pamina’s hand – trials by fireplace and water – are powerfully evoked by immersive video occasions. We not solely witness Tamino and his reluctant companion Papageno as they battle to outlive crackling flames and churning oceans; we additionally expertise vicariously, and on a deeply emotional degree, their religious journey of demise and rebirth.

On the opposite facet of the stage, Foley artist Ruth Sullivan skilfully utilises an arsenal of props to create the bangs, shakes, clicks, squeaks and different miscellaneous sounds demanded by the manufacturing. In a single scene of extremely audible slapstick, a drunken Papageno laboriously uncorks bottles of wine, pours out a number of the contents, and with a stick of celery in hand, hesitantly faucets Beethoven’s Ode to Pleasure on the half empties earlier than turning his again on the viewers to alleviate himself and retune. No auditory element was spared in Sullivan’s fastidiously simulated accompaniment.

The originality of the Complicité-style staging and use of sensible technical innovation to drive it make this manufacturing spectacular. However McBurney by no means permits intelligent stagecraft to eclipse the radiance of Mozart’s music, or distract from the opera’s central themes of affection, compassion and redemption.

The ENO’s Refrain and Orchestra sang and performed magnificently below the full of life baton of Erina Yashima, with an unsurprisingly magical contribution from principal flautist Claire Wickes.

A uniformly sturdy forged was distinguished by the supremely completed soprano Rainelle Krause as a haggard, bodily impaired Queen of the Evening. Directly menacing and susceptible, she packed a mighty vocal punch, whether or not spinning furiously in her wheelchair or making an attempt to regular herself on a strolling stick. Possessed of a crystalline coloratura, Krause delivered her arias with inch-perfect agility. Her tempestuous account of Act II’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ (‘Hell’s vengeance’) was an object lesson in breath management. Soprano Sarah Tynan satisfied because the Queen’s imprisoned daughter Pamina. Her mellow tone and incisive phrasing gracefully conveyed the character’s the Aristocracy and power and blended properly with that of her rescuer and lover Tamino who was boldly, if not so subtly, sung by US tenor Norman Reinhardt. The inevitably guano-spattered Papageno – bird-catching has its drawbacks – discovered richly-hued baritone David Stout on prime kind. Pure musicality apart, his mild sense of caprice and razor-sharp comedian timing made for an ideal, significantly English clown. His sad-faced however tragi-comical antics with a stepladder put one in thoughts of the late music corridor star Max Wall. He was laugh-out-loud hilarious when providing sustenance to Pamina – ‘Have some Victoria Sponge’- but heartrendingly tender when becoming a member of her within the duet ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe’ (‘Males who really feel the decision of affection’). After innumerable punishments and tribulations, he was rewarded with an ideal companion within the type of vibrant voiced Alexandra Oomens as Papagena.

There have been memorable performances from Peter Hoare because the irredeemably depraved Monostatos; Carrie-Ann Williams, Amy Holyland and Stephanie Wake-Edwards because the Queen of the Evening’s combat-clad Three Girls; three properly forged ‘Boys’ or, as right here, Spirits – considered one of whom was in reality a woman now – masquerading as wizened ancients tasked with main Tamino to Sarastro’s area; and the redoubtable Jonathan Lemalu within the function of Speaker.

But it was John Relyea’s stentorian Sarastro who carried the opera’s all-embracing message of knowledge and love. Standing on the entrance of the stage, he solemnly noticed that we reside in a time of nice disaster and the utmost gravity. Given the present state of the world, the importance of this zeitgeist second was not misplaced on the viewers, and one may detect a quiet ripple of assent throughout the packed home. Sarastro’s well timed reminder was adopted by the hymn ‘O Isis und Osiris’, a musical and deeply shifting plea for knowledge, power and persistence. The aria, as soon as described by George Bernard Shaw as ‘the one music that might not sound misplaced within the mouth of God’ was, for me and I think for others too, an inspirational second in McBurney’s seminal manufacturing.

Chris Sallon

Featured Picture: Norman Reinhardt (Tamino) and Sarah Tynan (Pamina) © Manuel Harlan

Solid:
Tamino – Norman Reinhardt
Pamina – Sarah Tynan
Papageno – David Stout
Papagena – Alexandra Oomens
The Queen of the Evening – Rainelle Krause
Three Girls – Carrie-Ann Williams, Amy Holyland, Stephanie Wake-Edwards
Monostatos – Peter Hoare
Sarastro – John Relyea
Speaker – Jonathan Lemalu
Spirits – Lucy Barlow, Ivo Clark, Ethan James
First Priest / First Armed Man – Gavan Ring
Second Priest / Second Armed Man – Ossian Huskinson

Foley Artist – Ruth Sullivan
Video Artist – Ben Thompson

Manufacturing:
Director – Simon McBurney
Revival Director – Rachael Hewer
Set designer – Michael Levine
Costume designer – Nicky Gillibrand
Lighting director – Jean Kalman
Motion director – Josie Daxter
Revival Video designer – Jane Michelmore
Sound designer – Gareth Fry
Refrain director – Martin Fitzpatrick