November 11, 2013
By Mark Satola
A panorama of visual delights,
and a catalog of dramatic invention, brought vivid life to Mozart's last and
best-loved opera, “The Magic Flute,” staged last weekend at the Cleveland
Institute of Music, in a production directed by CIM Opera Theater’s artistic
director David Bamberger.
In truth, it never hurts to
bring a little something extra to “The Magic Flute.” Mozart’s music is unassailable
– has there ever been an opera quite like this, where every number is a hit
tune? – but the libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder has enough holes in its
dramatic house that drafts blow through a little too easily.
Bamberger and his team crafted a
production that plugs the holes in various creative and appealing ways, in the
process streamlining the often-static tale into a focused exploration of the
opera’s consideration of romantic love in the context of Enlightenment
philosophy.
Halfway through the overture,
Bamberger has players onstage in street clothes, rummaging through a rack of
fanciful costumes and doing something inexplicable with flashlights and a
plastic trash can. It’s an ingenious “let's put on a show” gesture, but it also
suggests that what is to follow is a show in a higher octave, a ritual allegory
enacted for the enlightenment of the audience.
The business with the
flashlights becomes clear when the trash can re-enters the action proper as the
glaring head of the fearsome serpent pursuing Tamino through a rocky waste. In
this case, the wasteland extends beyond the modest stage in Kulas Hall into the
audience, as the monster, carried like a lion dance costume on Chinese New
Year, swirls through on its way back to the stage.
David Brooks’ one-size-fits-all
set, a multilevel platform with movable sections, is a fine solution to the
problem of creating rocky wastes, forest groves, gardens, temples of ordeal and
of the sun, and even pyramids on a single stage.
Rather than slow the action for
scenery shifting, Brooks employs striking lighting effects to differentiate
settings, reflecting the action and the music with a satisfying synesthesia of
color and music.
As for the music, the
redoubtable Harry Davidson led his singers and orchestra with a sure hand.
Friday night's singers were uniformly fine, as we have come to expect from CIM.
David Fair was a heroic and
ringing Prince Tamino, and Allyson Dezii was melting, both as a singer and an
actress, as Pamina, his beloved. As Queen of the Night, Samantha Farmilant well
conveyed both her character’s formidability and her bat-craziness, and earned
some extra whoops from the audience, after the famous Act 2 aria, and at her
curtain call. As the enigmatic Sarastro, bass I Sheng Huang brought sepulchral tones
and dignity to the role.
The most vivid presence in the
Friday night cast was Brian James Myer as the bird-catcher Papageno, prototype
of the comic sidekick, and the character who gets the most funny business
(Schickaneder wrote the role for himself, natch).
Dressed in an ill-fitting
waistcoat, tight red jeans and a bright orange feathered ruff, Myer capers,
grimaces and cuts up so well it’s easy to overlook his supple and expressive
baritone voice.
Costumes by Alison Garrigan were
colorful and lighthearted. The Queen of the Night’s three attendants were
resplendent in regalia that seemed a hybrid of 1980s Cyndi Lauper and
postmodern Goth. Most lovely were the briefly-seen oversize masks for the
beasts tamed by Tamino's magic flute.
Garrigan’s costumes for Sarastro
and his temple retinue underscored the ambiguity of Schickaneder's libretto.
Clad in a rainbow of identically tailored uniforms that hint at Maoist fashion,
the singers presented visually the conundrum of Sarastro.
Is he a good guy – working subtly
behind the scenes to coax the characters into a state of enlightenment? Or is
he a darker figure, committing plain crimes (for instance, kidnapping Pamina
and leaving her in the less-than-tender care of the monstrous Monostatos) to
proselytize for his own cult-like vision of enlightenment?
No production of “The Magic
Flute” can answer these questions, of course. But Bamberger and company's
presentation went far in suggesting that there is more to Mozart and
Schickaneder's tuneful allegory than meets the ear – and for pure
entertainment, it earned a top grade.
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