This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
The Atlanta Opera’s peppy and graceful staging of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” provided a joyful conclusion to the high drama of Election Day on Tuesday night.
A first-rate cast delivered Mozart’s last opera with luminous singing and nimble comic acting at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, where final performances will be Friday, Nov. 8, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10.
The 1791 opera is a rather odd bird, a singspiel with both singing and dialogue in the service of a fairy tale, with alternating episodes of ritual solemnity and playful high jinks.
Photo by Raftermen
Photo by Raftermen
Atlanta Opera has dusted off C. David Higgins’ 15-year-old sets — towering walls adorned with hieroglyphics — and added new elements such as dazzling projections by Nicholas Hussong. The result is often eye-popping. Cute animal puppets in a range of sizes contribute to the delightful spirit of this production.
Director Tomer Zvulun brings a lively momentum to the production, which takes a few appropriate liberties with Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto. He adds some pleasing contemporary references: A nod to Chick-fil-A is particularly amusing.
He also cuts some elements that modern audiences may find offensive. The original “Magic Flute” includes culturally insensitive material, such as portraying the petty villain Monostatos as a slave and the only Black character in the opera, one deemed to be inferior to the European characters. In this production, racial elements are excluded and Monostatos is played by a white singer.
The perennially popular opera, sung here in German with English subtitles, centers on Prince Tamino (Santiago Ballerini, with a ringing tenor), who journeys to save the Queen of the Night’s daughter, Pamina (the opulent soprano Mei Gui Zhang).
Mozart and Schikaneder muse on young love — Tamino and Pamina fall head over heels (rather quickly!) — mixing romance with a Masonic quest for enlightenment.
The opera is probably most famous for the two high-flying arias sung by the Queen of the Night. The role is actually rather small: The Queen appears on stage primarily two times but often steals the show with arias that soar to a stratospheric “F” above high “C.”
On Tuesday, Rainelle Krause brought a dramatic coloratura to the role of the Queen with laser-focused high notes and a pointillist exactitude in negotiating Mozart’s inhumanly difficult arias. It’s quite breathtaking, and Krause was rewarded with rapturous applause.
Tamino is joined on his quest by the bird-catching man-child Papageno, engagingly played on Tuesday by the warm-voiced baritone Luke Sutliff. They were assisted by three boys (the fine young singers Angel Williams, Adrienne Ocfemia and Max Walls), who travel by hot-air balloon.
Pamina, it turns out, is being protected — not everything in the story is what it seems — by the priest Sarastro, sung in this production by Peixin Chen with a magnificent sonorous bass.
The roles of three attendants to the Queen were radiantly sung with a lovely blend by Diana Newman, Alexandra Razskazoff and Meridian Prall. Others in the cast included the lyrical tenor Barry Banks (playing the pesky villain Monostatos) and the silvery-voiced Amanda Sheriff as Papageno’s love interest, Papagena. Wayd Odle and Jason Zacher provided solid contributions as, respectively, the First Priest and Second Priest.
Photo by Raftermen
Photo by Raftermen
Mozart’s music clearly defines character and ranges from simple and direct for characters such as Papageno to more elaborate and noble for Tamino and Pamina, stately for Sarastro and faux-Baroque for the Queen of the Night.
Numbering about two dozen, the chorus doesn’t sing often in the opera but added robust oomph to climactic moments on Tuesday. Rolando Salazar is responsible for the fine choral preparation.
Conductor Arthur Fagan led a buoyant performance, drawing polished and transparent playing from the excellent Atlanta Opera Orchestra.
MUSIC REVIEW
“The Magic Flute”
8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10, at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. $55-$300. 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway, Atlanta. 404-881-8885, atlantaopera.org
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Paul Hyde is a longtime arts journalist and English instructor in Upstate South Carolina. He writes frequently for the Greenville Journal, South Carolina Daily Gazette and Classical Voice North America.
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