There was a time, in and around the nineteen-sixties, when The Magic Flute, for all the sublime simplicity of its inspiration, seemed the hardest of Mozart’s great operas to bring off. Failed productions of it littered the European operatic scene as depressing evidence of the directorial blunders of which this lovely work, written in the last months of Mozart’s short life, was constantly the unfortunate victim.
Are things any better today? The balance between simple fun and Masonic severity remains a precarious one, which all too easily prompts the more theological aspect of this remarkable yet strangely self-destructive score to topple into inertia. That The Magic Flute is a masterpiece of the choicest sort is indisputable. Why, then, does it so often go wrong?
Three famous DVD recordings of it, which have recently come my way, have provided no answer. Indeed, choosing between David McVicar’s clever and resourceful Covent Garden production, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, the Salzburg Festival’s Mozart birthday production with Karel Appel’s marvellous decor, Pierre Audi’s polished staging and Riccardo Muti’s musical expertise, and Kenneth Branagh’s maverick movie version set amid the trenches of the First World War, has proved in various ways quite dismaying, leaving behind a desire never to see any of them again.
Forced to make a decision I would probably opt for the Covent Garden version, even if Davis’s conducting, after an exquisite Act One and a deeply moving Pamina-Papageno duet, grows increasing slow and stately, and Franz-Joseph Selig’s Sarastro is insufferably ponderous. But at least Simon Keenlyside’s clodhopping Papageno is a pleasure, McVicar’s priests (particularly Thomas Allen’s crabby old Sprecher) are diverting, and Dorothea Roschmann’s Pamina is genuinely touching, even though her Tamino lacks any sort of masculine charm.
But Covent Garden is really too grand a setting for Mozart, and the same must be said for Salzburg’s vast Festspielhaus, where Appel’s Alpine rocks look alluringly climbable and the veneer of the Vienna Philharmonic is as good as it gets (though the Covent Garden orchestra plays more sweetly for Davis).
But impressively though the cast sing, their characterisation amounts to surprisingly little. Papageno’s arrival in a clapped-out Citroen Deux Cheveux is a joke that cannot be sustained, and Christian Gerhaher’s portrayal is an empty vessel - as unfunny as Papageno can be. Diana Damrau’s verve as the Queen of Night is, however, undeniable and Rene Pape’s Sarastro is a grandly sonorous, if not greatly likeable, presence.
Pape, fascinatingly, is also the Sarastro of Branagh’s movie - and a very different one, young, casually dressed, not at all the dignified high priest we are accustomed to seeing. Here he is the man in charge of a field hospital, perhaps also of some sort of Findhorn community around which he rides on horseback. Though by no means ostentatious, he is quite the most watchable character on view.
Filmed at Shepperton studios near London, the action is explosive, rain-swept, muddily entrenched, acoustically divorced from opera as we know it. Yet, irritating though all this can be, including a panoramic vision of war graves, it does not lack ideas. Tamino, smartly uniformed, is a tenor whose voice you initially expect to be that of a counter-tenor in some new-fangled Handel production. Papageno is a cheery trooper whose pigeons are trained to detect poison gas. There is a suicidally crazed Queen of Night, vocalising at virtuoso speed.
Many of the singers, including the pretty Pamina, are novices - lovely to look at if not always to listen to. But the atmosphere of twentieth-century warfare is certainly caught, even if it distorts the story. Where the orchestra is situated is anybody’s guess but the American conductor James Conlon, a fine, firm Mozartian who was once principal guest conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, brings vivacity to the accompaniments.
If asked to supply a star rating, I would confine the Branagh movie to one star (plus half a star for expensive effort), the Salzburg version to two, and the Covent Garden to three. In other words, hardly enough. A five-star Flute is elusive on DVD, though I still have a soft spot for the good old Ingmar Bergman film.
29 April 2016
Are things any better today? The balance between simple fun and Masonic severity remains a precarious one, which all too easily prompts the more theological aspect of this remarkable yet strangely self-destructive score to topple into inertia. That The Magic Flute is a masterpiece of the choicest sort is indisputable. Why, then, does it so often go wrong?
Three famous DVD recordings of it, which have recently come my way, have provided no answer. Indeed, choosing between David McVicar’s clever and resourceful Covent Garden production, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, the Salzburg Festival’s Mozart birthday production with Karel Appel’s marvellous decor, Pierre Audi’s polished staging and Riccardo Muti’s musical expertise, and Kenneth Branagh’s maverick movie version set amid the trenches of the First World War, has proved in various ways quite dismaying, leaving behind a desire never to see any of them again.
Forced to make a decision I would probably opt for the Covent Garden version, even if Davis’s conducting, after an exquisite Act One and a deeply moving Pamina-Papageno duet, grows increasing slow and stately, and Franz-Joseph Selig’s Sarastro is insufferably ponderous. But at least Simon Keenlyside’s clodhopping Papageno is a pleasure, McVicar’s priests (particularly Thomas Allen’s crabby old Sprecher) are diverting, and Dorothea Roschmann’s Pamina is genuinely touching, even though her Tamino lacks any sort of masculine charm.
But Covent Garden is really too grand a setting for Mozart, and the same must be said for Salzburg’s vast Festspielhaus, where Appel’s Alpine rocks look alluringly climbable and the veneer of the Vienna Philharmonic is as good as it gets (though the Covent Garden orchestra plays more sweetly for Davis).
But impressively though the cast sing, their characterisation amounts to surprisingly little. Papageno’s arrival in a clapped-out Citroen Deux Cheveux is a joke that cannot be sustained, and Christian Gerhaher’s portrayal is an empty vessel - as unfunny as Papageno can be. Diana Damrau’s verve as the Queen of Night is, however, undeniable and Rene Pape’s Sarastro is a grandly sonorous, if not greatly likeable, presence.
Pape, fascinatingly, is also the Sarastro of Branagh’s movie - and a very different one, young, casually dressed, not at all the dignified high priest we are accustomed to seeing. Here he is the man in charge of a field hospital, perhaps also of some sort of Findhorn community around which he rides on horseback. Though by no means ostentatious, he is quite the most watchable character on view.
Filmed at Shepperton studios near London, the action is explosive, rain-swept, muddily entrenched, acoustically divorced from opera as we know it. Yet, irritating though all this can be, including a panoramic vision of war graves, it does not lack ideas. Tamino, smartly uniformed, is a tenor whose voice you initially expect to be that of a counter-tenor in some new-fangled Handel production. Papageno is a cheery trooper whose pigeons are trained to detect poison gas. There is a suicidally crazed Queen of Night, vocalising at virtuoso speed.
Many of the singers, including the pretty Pamina, are novices - lovely to look at if not always to listen to. But the atmosphere of twentieth-century warfare is certainly caught, even if it distorts the story. Where the orchestra is situated is anybody’s guess but the American conductor James Conlon, a fine, firm Mozartian who was once principal guest conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, brings vivacity to the accompaniments.
If asked to supply a star rating, I would confine the Branagh movie to one star (plus half a star for expensive effort), the Salzburg version to two, and the Covent Garden to three. In other words, hardly enough. A five-star Flute is elusive on DVD, though I still have a soft spot for the good old Ingmar Bergman film.
29 April 2016
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