★★★✰✰
Still going strong after almost twenty years, David McVicar’s multifaceted production serves up a delicious dream of celestial imagery accentuated with enlightenment philosophy, tongue-in-cheek humour, vibrant set and costumes that explode with colour and life.
It starts as a whimsical journey into an enchanted forest, then unravels into a story about human triumph over adversity and ignorance. Antagonisms are at the heart of the opera; it’s political and a flight into fantasy. Light versus dark, ignorance and knowledge, able to entertain both adults and children alike with its creativity whilst hinting at deeper ideas about humanity.
McVicar’s production is rich with imagery that keeps the production feeling as if it is floating. From the grandiose puppet serpent that chases Tamino as the opera opens to Monostratos cast as the bony-fingered pale-faced Nosferatu, a tribute even more fitting given the film’s hundredth anniversary. John Macfarlane’s designs show no signs of aging, neither does Paule Constable’s lighting design. The latter draws out the contrast of darkness and light creating vivid chiaroscuro.
It’s a treat for the performers who step up to the plate to fully inhabit Mozart’s world. Filipe Manu’s Tamino brings a curious interpretation to his performance. Sometimes it feels like he’s discovering the music for the first time; a little unsteady at first, like dipping your toe into a hot bath, but with each note comes more confidence, and soon he slips into the role. Gyula Orendt’s Papageno delights with slapstick physicality. Orendt is not as natural a clown as he is a singer and some of the clowning incorporated into the performance is grating, but his sonorous vocals capture Papageno’s melancholy with sentimentality and skill.
The freshness is also partly thanks to Maxim Emelyanychev who electrifies the music with pulsating vivacity. His first time conducting the opera, he brings pace and buoyancy, injecting Mozart’s world with organic energy that effervesces off the stage. However some restraint wouldn’t go amiss, especially for Anna Prohaska’s arias as Pamina that felt too rushed for her to fully blossom.
But it is Aigul Khismatullina’s beguiling Queen of the Night who earns her place in the memories of the audience: initially velvety and smooth but soon ramping up her vocal performance with a thrilling potency for the ‘Der Hölle Rache Kocht in Meinem Herzen’ she makes it sounds as if one is hearing it for the first time all over again.
Words by Alexander Cohen
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