Royal Opera House
Tamino – Toby Spence
Three Ladies – Sinéad Mulhern,
Nadezhda Karyazina, Claudia HucklePapageno – Markus Werba
Queen of the Night – Anna Siminska
Monostatos – Colin Judson
Pamina – Jania Brugger
Three Boys – Michael Clayton-Jolly, Matthew Price, Alessio D’Andrea
Speaker – Benjamin Bevan
Sarastro – Georg Zeppenfeld
Priests – Harry Nicoll, Donald Maxwell
Papagena – Rhian Lois
Two Armoured Men – Samuel Sakker, James Platt
Sir David McVicar (director)
John Macfarlane (designs)Paule Constable (lighting)
Leah Hausman (movement)
When, a couple of years ago,
I last saw David McVicar’s production of The Magic Flute,
I was pleased to note that Leah Hausman’s revival direction had brought new
life to a staging which, at its
previous revival in 2011, had begun to seem tired. In terms of staging, it
seems to have perked up further in 2015. Part of the reason, I suspect, must be
McVicar’s having returned to direct the revival himself: something I did not
pick up on until after the event, but which, in retrospect, certainly told. Not
only did the cast members appear perfectly clear what they were and what they
should be doing; a considerable amount of movement (typically well planned by
Leah Hausman) had been rethought, reinvented. I can be very touchy – many would
doubtless say too touchy, but here I stand… – when it comes to Mozart, and
regret what seemed to me a shift towards the merely comic. However, if my
memory serves me correctly, and this is a production I have watched regularly
on DVD too, it was a shift rather than a wrench. Many, in any case, will feel
differently, should the widespread enthusiasm for Nicholas Hytner’s old ENO staging, an enthusiasm I never felt in the slightest, be anything
to go by. There remains delight to be had in John Macfarlane’s designs; a
visual, if less an intellectual, sense of eighteenth-century Enlightenment remains
happily present too. At any rate, it is pleasing to see a twelve-year-old
production – I shall never forget Sir Colin Davis’s conducting during its
initial run – refreshed and reinvigorated.
Cornelius Meister’s
conducting had its moments; comparisons with Davis would be pointless. Meister
sometimes seemed hamstrung by the (presumably self-inflicted) size of his
orchestra, nowhere more so than in an often scrawny account of the Overture. When
will conductors recognise the crucial matter of the size of a house in
suggesting the necessary, or at least desirable, number of strings? There was sometimes
a tendency to rush, too, an especially noteworthy occasion being the merely
glib conclusion to the first act; here, Mozart should sound at his most Beethovenian.
However, there was orchestral beauty, albeit of a Fricsay-Abbado ‘light’,
almost free-floating variety, worlds away from Klemperer, Böhm, or Davis, let
alone Furtwängler. Harmony, then, might have been given more of its due. Some of
the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House’s woodwind playing was truly ravishing;
I recall a particularly fruity bassoon line, but there were many other
instances. If there were a few disjunctures between pit and stage, there was
little that was grievous, and little, moreover, that seemed unlikely to be
rectified in the progress of this run of performances.
Toby Spence proved an ardent
Tamino, a little darker-hued than we often hear, and certainly none the worse
for that. This was the first time I had heard his Pamina, Jania Brugger, but I
very much hope that it will not be the last. Her performance balanced dignity
and beauty of tone in properly Mozartian manner, her second-act aria an object
lesson in pathos without exaggeration. ‘Bei Männern’ was an especial delight,
given the participation of Markus Werba as Papageno. I do not think I have ever
heard a less than excellent performance from him, and this was no exception.
His Viennese way with the dialogue came as balm to the ears; but there was sadness
too, as there must be beneath any clowning. Rhian Lois made the most of her
role as his intended: an impressive Royal Opera debut. Anna Siminska’s Queen of
the Night had the occasional slip, but this is a well-nigh impossible role;
there was much nevertheless to admire. Georg Zeppenfeld’s Sarastro presented
gravitas leavened by humanity, as did Benjamin Bevan’s Speaker. If the Three
Ladies were not always ideally blended, the Three Boys proved delightfully
aethereal, Mozart’s tricky chromaticism holding no fears for them. Colin Judson
offered character that was more than mere caricature with his Monostatos.
(Really, though, there should be a better solution to Sarastro’s line concerning
the Moor’s blackness than stopping half-way through, pausing, and
resuming later on!)
