For all Mozart’s musical genius, The Magic Flute is usually a lengthy and never particularly humorous evening on the opera. That definitely isn’t the case with Simon McBurney’s 2013 manufacturing on the beleaguered English Nationwide Opera. Staged in collaboration with Complicité, and scrupulously revived by director Rachael Hewer, there’s a lifetime of wit, knowledge and theatrical audacity distilled on this creative peach of a present.
Ditching the masonic mumbo-jumbo and gussying up the dialogue, McBurney has you laughing out loud. A dozen actors, their motion superbly choreographed, bustle round with out ever pulling focus; singers inhabit the auditorium with out it feeling gratuitous. There’s aerial wizardry, tiny shadow puppets, some creative and immaculately coordinated dwell video (Ben Thompson) and equally ingenious deployment of an onstage foley artist (Ruth Sullivan).
Conductor Erina Yashima’s tough and prepared whizz by means of the overture was adopted by a brisk account of the rating with occasional coordination points. In any other case, the ENO Orchestra, raised to stage stage to accommodate intelligent interactions with the singers, was in positive fettle.
Sarah Tynan led a wonderful solid as a plausible, dramatically alert Pamina, her elegant soprano slicing by means of orchestral textures like a switchblade. Norman Reinhardt is a hard-working, personable Tamino, although his plus dimension voice made a meal of Mozart’s sleek strains. David Stout’s nice-but-dim Papageno is an engagingly bumbling bird-catcher, face and garments streaked with guano. The function can fall flat, however the comedian timing right here is spot-on; a routine that includes tuned wine bottles and a full bladder introduced the home down. As Sarastro, John Relyea’s obsidian bass conveys gravitas and authority.
McBurney’s Queen of the Night time (Rainelle Krause) is a superannuated harridan, tottering about with a stick when not confined to a wheelchair. Together with her diamantine coloratura, Krause nails her Act II aria whereas trundling across the stage like a demented dalek. The three girls (Carrie-Ann Williams, Amy Holyland and Stephanie Wake-Edwards) are tight, ferocious and humorous, the three spirits – two boys and a woman – sing like a dream and Peter Hoare’s pervy Monostatos deserves each boo he obtained on the curtain name. Opera is seldom as humorous.
