In response to my thoughts last week on The Magic Flute - with the evidence of three DVD productions showing how not to stage it - my old friend John Duffus has drawn my attention to a fourth version, in the hope that it might interest me. It can be seen, complete and at no cost, on You Tube, and, though it looks rather the worse for wear, it is good enough to oust many performances that have recently come my way.
Dating from 1971, not necessarily a good time for Magic Flutes, it was clearly a success in its day and there is no problem in seeing why. One of the highlights of the Hamburg State Opera repertoire when the great Rolf Liebermann was the company’s intendant, it reminds us how fast Hamburg recovered from the fire-bombing it received during the Second World War. Emerging like a phoenix (as was said at the time) from the chaos, the company brought six productions to the 1952 Edinburgh Festival, including a valiant Fidelio with Martha Modl, a sterling presentation of Hindemith’s little-known Mathis der Maler, a vanguard Der Freischutz in abstract decor, a Meistersinger and Rosenkavalier the like of which had not been seen in Britain for years, and - last but not least - a merry Magic Flute conducted by the young Georg Solti with the black-voiced Gottlob Frick as Sarastro amd Horst Gunter and his family portraying Papageno, Papagena, and their children (born and growing up by the end of the performance).
Though the city was not yet fully rebuilt, the opera company was alive and kicking. A decade or so later, as The Scotsman’s music critic, I saw a handsome production of Verdi’s Nabucco there, performed in German but with the title-role (thanks to the resourcefulness with which Hamburg faced last-minute casting problems) sung in Italian by an Italian baritone. It was good enough to stick in the memory.
But the Magic Flute filmed by You Tube in 1971 was not the idyllc Solti one. By then it had been replaced by another, staged by Peter Ustinov at a time when he was getting into opera and had already staged Massenet’s Don Quixote, a work that suited him admirably, in Paris. On the evidence of the You Tube film, however, his Hamburg Flute contained little of the whimsicality that was to surface a few years later in his Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival, where an eighteenth-century Sherlock Holmes, complete with magnifying glass, tried to discover what happened to Giovanni at the end of the supper scene.
Ustinov’s Magic Flute, though comic, was straightforward and admirable in a way that few Flutes now tend to be. His Papageno was the Puckish young American baritone William Workman. His Sarastro was the noble Hans Sotin, splendidly secure and serene. Edith Mathis was the predictably sweet and sparkling Pamina, Nicolai Gedda the heroic, but lyrically heroic, Tamino, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau the quietly eloquent Sprecher. Star-casting indeed, showing what sort of performers Rolf Liebermann liked to have at his disposal. The Three Boys (real choirboys) descended by hot-air balloon - nowadays common enough practice but then a touch of Ustinov originality.
Only the Dutch soprano Christine Deutecom - though she would soon be an impressive Amelia in Verdi’s Masked Ball for Scottish Opera - seemed dowdily miscast as the Queen of Night. Horst Stein was the thoroughly alert, adept conductor.
It was a performance that lost none of its impetus as it progressed. Today its flaw lies in the fact that the film involved transferring it from opera house to TV studio and in the obvious lip-synchronisation of the singers.
But the fact that it costs nothing to watch does make some amends for this, and for the murky photography.
5 May 2016
To view the Hamburg Magic Flute key in Magic Flute Ustinov Hamburg 1971 to You Tube.
Dating from 1971, not necessarily a good time for Magic Flutes, it was clearly a success in its day and there is no problem in seeing why. One of the highlights of the Hamburg State Opera repertoire when the great Rolf Liebermann was the company’s intendant, it reminds us how fast Hamburg recovered from the fire-bombing it received during the Second World War. Emerging like a phoenix (as was said at the time) from the chaos, the company brought six productions to the 1952 Edinburgh Festival, including a valiant Fidelio with Martha Modl, a sterling presentation of Hindemith’s little-known Mathis der Maler, a vanguard Der Freischutz in abstract decor, a Meistersinger and Rosenkavalier the like of which had not been seen in Britain for years, and - last but not least - a merry Magic Flute conducted by the young Georg Solti with the black-voiced Gottlob Frick as Sarastro amd Horst Gunter and his family portraying Papageno, Papagena, and their children (born and growing up by the end of the performance).
Though the city was not yet fully rebuilt, the opera company was alive and kicking. A decade or so later, as The Scotsman’s music critic, I saw a handsome production of Verdi’s Nabucco there, performed in German but with the title-role (thanks to the resourcefulness with which Hamburg faced last-minute casting problems) sung in Italian by an Italian baritone. It was good enough to stick in the memory.
But the Magic Flute filmed by You Tube in 1971 was not the idyllc Solti one. By then it had been replaced by another, staged by Peter Ustinov at a time when he was getting into opera and had already staged Massenet’s Don Quixote, a work that suited him admirably, in Paris. On the evidence of the You Tube film, however, his Hamburg Flute contained little of the whimsicality that was to surface a few years later in his Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival, where an eighteenth-century Sherlock Holmes, complete with magnifying glass, tried to discover what happened to Giovanni at the end of the supper scene.
Ustinov’s Magic Flute, though comic, was straightforward and admirable in a way that few Flutes now tend to be. His Papageno was the Puckish young American baritone William Workman. His Sarastro was the noble Hans Sotin, splendidly secure and serene. Edith Mathis was the predictably sweet and sparkling Pamina, Nicolai Gedda the heroic, but lyrically heroic, Tamino, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau the quietly eloquent Sprecher. Star-casting indeed, showing what sort of performers Rolf Liebermann liked to have at his disposal. The Three Boys (real choirboys) descended by hot-air balloon - nowadays common enough practice but then a touch of Ustinov originality.
Only the Dutch soprano Christine Deutecom - though she would soon be an impressive Amelia in Verdi’s Masked Ball for Scottish Opera - seemed dowdily miscast as the Queen of Night. Horst Stein was the thoroughly alert, adept conductor.
It was a performance that lost none of its impetus as it progressed. Today its flaw lies in the fact that the film involved transferring it from opera house to TV studio and in the obvious lip-synchronisation of the singers.
But the fact that it costs nothing to watch does make some amends for this, and for the murky photography.
5 May 2016
To view the Hamburg Magic Flute key in Magic Flute Ustinov Hamburg 1971 to You Tube.
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