Opera Chic

On Branagh's Flute

As Kenneth Branagh lifers, we pretty much loved his 2006 English-translation Zauberflöte, which lightened Mozart's last opera into a romantic comedy (despite blood-soaked WWI trenchs).

Through idiosyncratic casting, Joseph Kaiser as hero Tamino sets off on a dangerous journey to wife Amy Carson's Pamina, guided by charismatic Benjamin Jay Davis' Papageno and a star cameo by René Pape's Sarastro.

Sure, it's not the ROH's chilly David McVicar production with feisty Damrau, Roschmann, and Keenlyside's Aspergery hero or Ingmar Bergman's Swedish language classic (uncut version on the 'tubes here), but it's modern and bright.

With a lean box office release that excluded the USA and a DVD footprint that blacklisted North American Region 1'ers, its a temperamental beast, but youtube managed to hogtie Branagh's unicorn in two parts.

Paper Dragons: Julie Taymor's Die Zauberflöte at The Metropolitan Opera

© Beth Bergman 2006

Since its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in the Fall of 2004, Julie Taymor's Broadway-translation of Mozart's (and really, where would we be without Emanuel Schikaneder's imaginative wallop of a libretto) Die Zauberflöte has claimed its rank among the Metropolitan Opera's tony legacy of directorial Zauberflöte collaborations, holding company with David Hockney and Marc Chagall -- which is why the Met has consistently offered Taymor's hit production among their yearly roster every year since its premiere. Stripped of its stellar cast from an amalgam of past seasons (Rene Pape, Nathan "black belt jones" Gunn, Dorothea Röschmann aka La Doro, queen not of the night but of all things Mozart, and Isabel Bayrakdarian, and Jonas Kaufmann) Taymor's vision still dazzles and provides a fertile backdrop for opera's up-and-coming singers to hone their live-stage manners.

The puppet-packed production has Taymor's stamp all over it: costume design, direction, concept, and puppetry are all her notions, while George Tsypin designed the sets, and Donald Holder tinkered with the lights. The collaboration -- craftsmanship is kissed & tickled by lofty kites and dancing birds -- sugar-coats Schikaneder's complex, layered themes of cruelty and psychological collapse, and even if sometimes OC thinks that Graham Vick's bombthrowing concept in Salzburg 2005, duly booed, where the Queen of the Night is good and Sarastro is evil, the leader of a hellish gang of gerontocrats, is really in the end the way to go, because she never bought the gooey layers of Masonic  goodness, that's okay: with Taymor your ticket has granted you entry into a fantasy world where gigantic, billowing white bears keep at bay any of the Die Zauberflöte's ghastly, unpleasant themes (three attempted rapes, suicide, isolation, etc...).

After all, Mozart himself took his kid to see this opera, didn't he.

With such ambitious sets, the musical and dramatic pacing of the opera takes a few awkward hits, too-long codas stretched to infinity to accommodate intricate entrances and rotating sets. The Queen of the Night's inaugural arrival (" Sie kommt! Sie kommt!") was ungraceful, pocked with a long silence -- although such self-imposed codas made for a seemingly constant flow of applause that marked each scene.

The final Initiation was anti-climactic with the two leads riding in a shaky elevator. Upon completing the Initiation Rite at the Temple of Trials, passing through water and fire, an off-stage chorus emasculates the triumph of the task in a tamper that badly blows it. Which leaves us to ask ourselves: Can someone please set Die Zauberflöte in an American Frat House? The final initiation should entail paddles, beer kegs, and goats. Or something like Richard Linklater's 1993 Dazed and Confused.

Papageno Wore Chucks

When it comes to the crazy adventures of the bird-catcher and his gang, Opera Chic is partial to the 2005 production by Graham Vick that was duly considered offensive by the Salzburg old dudes and their wives (who don't like to have their sh^t f*cked up the way Vick does) and promptly replaced one year later with Pierre Audi's half-rehashed, inoffensive production.

This year, Audì's production came back -- conducted as always by Riccardo Muti.

We have to admit that:

a) Markus Werba as Papageno and Irena Bespalovaite as Papagena, despite the silly dreads, despite having being dunked in a tub full of saffron, are still cute as the proverbial buttons.

b) Chucks are always cool

"I Am The Bird Train Catcher": Die Zauberflöte Catches Berlin's Subway

We blogged a few days ago the production of The Magic Flute staged in a new, yet-to-be-used station of Berlin's subway system.

Here are moah pictures, with bada$$ stilettos for our (not so few) fetish-appreciative readers:

Killer stiletto:

The Mozart Underground: The Magic Flute Goes Down

Die Zauberflote in the Berlin subway.

srsly

Tickets cost slightly more than a Metrocard but it looks like it's worth it.

O RLY? YES RLY: "The Magic Flute" Screencaps

As promised here, I've uploaded 64 (sixty-four) (SIXTY-FOUR) (six-four) screencaps from the English-language version of Mozart/Schkikaneder's Die Zauberflöte (English version, okay, whatevs...The Magic Flute) (with Julie Taymor's direction) at the NYC Metropolitan Opera House, part of PBS's "Great Performances at the MET" series.

Go here to find the new set on the Opera Chic flickr page. Enjoy!

Great Performances at the MET: Die Zauberflöte

Thanks to La Cieca's gentle reminder, this unashamed Opera Nerd stayed in last night and caught the condensed/bastardized version of Mozart/Schkikaneder's Die Zauberflöte at the MET, as part of PBS's "Great Performances at the MET" series. Opera Chic saw this live in NYC during it's inaugural run (albeit in the original German-language), and forgot what a delight it was...with Julie "Lion King" Taymor's direction of giant puppet-bears, floating feasts, skeletal birds, and a boom-box glockenspiel.

High def screenshots were taken (this time on the inferior panel of an LCD) of Nathan Gunn's hammy (but gorgeous) face, Morris Robinson's latex breasts, and Isabel Bayrakdarian's pancaked face. And Rene Pape. Thank you Toll [house cookie] Brothers!!

A few screenshots for now (and much more later), as Opera Chic has a full day of musical adventures awaiting, and therefore must jump!

Al Jolson called. he wants his blackface back.

This Saturday night marks the premiere of Komische Oper Berlin's staging of Die Zauberflöte by that sassy little scamp, Hans Neuenfels, who last made international news in September, 2006, with the Berlin Deutsche Oper cancellation of his Idomeneo, when the holy wrath of Islamic activists ruthlessly served his ass.

The man cannot be stopped! He is robot + man! This Saturday, he unapologetically presents a rescripted production of Die Zauberflöte, with Peter Renz as an unmistakably blackened Monostatos. We previously saw hilarious blackface under Neuenfels' direction of Zemlinsky's Der König Kandaules at the Wiener Volksoper in September 2002, and now it makes a triumphant return.

Although Neuenfels isn't the first director to depict Monostatos in blackface (Norbert Orth also appeared in blackface in Wolfgang Sawallisch's 1983 Munich Opera version with Popp, Gruberova, and Moll), I personally don't see the necessity or the allure. Call me myopic.

Aside from his use of the oldest racist caricature in the entire book, this production actually doesn't look so bad. O_O @ teh three ladies! ^.^ I mean, this image alone is worth like a dozen jokes about magnifying glasses + man-crotch.

Nevertheless, please address all complaints and grievances directly to Hans Neuenfels.