ZAUBERFLÖTE,
K.620
Opera in Two Acts by
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sung in German with English titles
Tamino……………Bruce
Sledge
Pamina……………Andrea Rost
Papageno…………Rodney Gilfry
Konegin…………..Sumi Jo
Sarastro…………..Reinhard Hagen
Monostatos……...Greg Fedderly
Speaker…………...James Creswell
First Lady………...Robin Follman
Second Lady……..Cynthia Jansen
Third Lady………..Suzanna Guzman
Papagena…………Shana Blake Hill
First Spirit………...Lauren Libaw
Second Spirit……..Daniel Reardon
Third Spirit……….Aidan Schultz-Meyer
Lawrence Foster,
conductor
Sir. Peter J. Hall, production designer
Stanley M. Garner, stage director
Gerald Scarfe, set and costume designer
Michael Gottlieb, lighting designer
Performance of Friday, April 12,
2002 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
All photos by KEN HOWARD,
courtesy of Los Angeles Opera
 LOS
ANGELES, CALIF -- Is there a more magical, more
enchanting, or more profoundly human work for the lyric stage than
Mozart’s The Magic Flute?
I do not think so, especially where the marriage of the
producer’s conception and the composer’s intentions was such a
happy one as the Los Angeles Opera’s revival of Sir Peter Hall’s
1993 production.
Mozart began writing the score of The Magic Flute in
Vienna in June 1791, and had already completed the main body of the
work by the end of September before he was summoned to Prague to
supervise the staging of his final, coronation opera La Clemenza
di Tito. During the
time while Mozart was away in Prague, his librettist/impresario
Emanuel Schikaneder busied himself with devising novel stage effects
and costumes that would guarantee the show a big hit with the
working-class tavern-drinking crowd. It is well known that Mozart incorporated the Freemasonic
symbolism of Three’s in the opera’s music and plot (three flats
in the key of E-flat that begins and ends the opera, three Spirits,
three Ladies, thrice-repeated chords, etc.)
These allegorical symbols soon took on an almost metaphysical
significance for later audiences and interpreters of the work (who
mistook slow tempi for profundity).
Therefore, for the modern producer and stage director of The
Magic Flute, the thorny question is, “how to balance the
mythical with the human elements?”
 The
answer, according to the Los Angeles Opera’s new production team,
is simple: Set the
opera in a vaguely Egyptian locale (i.e., Pyramids and half-man,
half-Sphinx beings) and populate it with exotic creatures (e.g., a
half-crocodile, half-penguin hybrid) and colorful costumes (e.g.,
Papageno’s feather-covered leotard, Pamina’s gleaming art-deco
gown, and Tamino’s red-lined Oriental suit.)
This never-never land provides an exotic backdrop for human interactions, and the
characters thereby take on a larger-than-life, allegorical
significance.
The action takes place in Ancient Egypt (circa
4,000 B.C.). Sarastro,
high priest of Isis, has abducted Pamina, daughter of the malevolent
Queen of the Night, in order to impart wisdom to her.
Saved from a huge serpent from the Queen’s three attendant
ladies, the Japanese Prince Tamino sets out to rescue Pamina.
He is accompanied by Papageno, the happy-go-lucky bird
catcher. However, in
trying to effect Pamina’s release he himself becomes taken up with
the high ideals of Sarastro and his followers.
He becomes initiated into the Order and, finally, is married
to Pamina, who has by now absorbed all the wisdom to which she has
been exposed.
 As
Tamino, tenor Bruce Sledge, a third-year Los Angeles Opera resident
artist, had plenty of weight but not a lot of natural lyricism, nor
did he move well on stage. It
was a very acceptable performance but not a particularly appealing
one, and in the opening ‘Portrait’ aria there were two or three
moments that did not seem to me perfectly tuned.
In the Act Two encounter scene with Pamina, who let out a
sweet, poignant cry “Tamino mein!
O welch ein Glück!”, Mr. Sledge repeated the same
phrase clumsily, with neither a sign of ardor nor grace – One felt
as if being doused over the head with a bucket of cold water.
 The
Korean-born, Italian-trained soprano Sumi Jo’s Queen of Night was
on the light side, without great weight in the upper register but
very fluent and spirited in the coloratura and as near to perfect in
her pitching of it as one could reasonably expect.
And there was a real glow and presence to the tone, in the
middle register particularly, that makes her first aria “O
zittre nicht” very telling.
Her second aria “Der Hölle Rache” was taken at a
slower pace than usual, but with spectacular results that matched
her equally spectacular shimmering black peacock-feathered
overdress.
German bass Reinhard Hagen delivered a really
splendid Sarastro, deep, duly authoritative, and warm in tone, with
a quiet nobility in "In diesen heil’gen Hallen";
and James Creswell's Speaker had a pleasing weight and fluency.
The Three Ladies formed a lively, perky trio, and the Three
Spirits
were feathery-toned and sounding appropriately angelic (although I
would have preferred a fuller sound.)
Greg Fedderly’s green dwarf of a Monostatos looked like a
caricature but, thankfully, did not sing like one.
Shana Blake Hill was a delightfully girlish Papagena.
The popular American baritone Rodney Gilfry was
clearly the darling of the audience, judging from the amount of
laughs he received for his crackling delivery of dialogs and for his
unerring comic timing. Make
no mistake, though, behind the guise of a lovable buffoon was a
serious musician. Mr.
Gilfry sang the two strophic songs of Papageno with mellifluous
lines and unfailing musicality.
 Hungarian
soprano Andrea Rost, making her Los Angeles Opera debut, was as fine
a Pamina as one could wish for. Her petite frame and wide-eyed innocent look conceal a voice
of radiant beauty that, when required, is capable of unleashing
great power with utter security.
A natural actress who moves as elegantly as she sings, Ms.
Rost left an indelible impression even in her first scene.
As the evening progressed, the charm and girlish vivacity
gradually blossomed into maturity and passion in the cry of “Die
Wahrheit!” and in the aforementioned “Tamino mein!”.
In her scene with the Three Spirits, Pamina begged them to
take her to her beloved Tamino (“Führt mich hin, ich möcht
ihn sehn / take me there. I want to see him”) with a cloying
sweetness that would melt the hardest heart.
In the ensuing ensemble, the voice rose higher and higher in
a show of great emotional outpouring and ended with a touchingly
executed downward scale in “die Götter selbsten schützen sie / the
gods themselves protect them”.
Ms. Rost achieved lyrical apotheosis with her gorgeously sung
“Ach, ich fül’s”, taken at an unhurried pace, thus
allowing the full emotional weight to register. Her perfectly poised soft B-flats, her honeyed legato on the
slow ascending scales, all created such magical effects that one
would not soon forget. Ms
Rost is one of the great Mozartians of our time, perhaps of all
time.
The inexplicably slow, portentous introduction
of the overture belied the vital, rhythmically buoyant reading that
was soon to follow. Conductor
Lawrence Foster, on loan from Barcelona, took the Romantic view of
the score – broad tempos with no appoggiaturas (nor cadenza for
the Three Ladies, which Mozart cut before the premiere). The
final phrases of “Ach, ich fuhl's”, as the wind
instruments slowly fell away and left Pamina alone and desolate,
were very moving indeed. The
chorus sang with stirring high spirits in the two act finales.
Truman
C. Wang is editor of Classical Voice.
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