The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote)

I'm not happy. I feel bad about it, but I'm not happy! I wanted to love it. It's Mozart, it was opening night, it's got two of my favourite arias - I really wanted to be blown away. Maybe I wanted to it too much. Maybe that's why I feel so sorely disappointed.

First the good. They've clearly spent a lot of time and effort in the production. It really is quite nice to look at and there's stuff like revolving rooms, giant puppet dragons, acrobats, fancy entries and exits - the Queen of the Night floating in on the moon is really cool.

Tamino (Andrew Goodwin), Pamina (Sarah Crane), Sarastro (Daniel Sumiegi), Monostatos (Kanen Breen), the Three Ladies, and the Three Boys were really good in their roles, I have no complaints there.

So I guess that brings me on to the bad.

I read an article a few weeks ago about where someone complained that they believed the opera company was concentrating too much on the production and not on the singing. I'd like to think that both are important as opera is about the acting and the singing. But in this case, I really had to agree with the article. As great as the set looked, sometimes it was just distracting. Did there really need to be aerial acrobatics going on over the singers? Sometimes watched them rather than the performance.

What the hell was with the recitative being in broad ocker English? It was jarring to reach the end of a song then get *Strine* spoken. This applies to Papageno (Andrew Moran) in particular. I know he's meant to be comic relief but the bogan direction was too much. Ditto with Papagena who was described by one of my party as a *Franga Hanger*. Think about it.

This next bit I feel really bad complaining about. In 2004, I saw the Agnes Letestu dance Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty ballet. In the Rose Adagio when Aurora meets her four suitors, there's a bit where the ballerina has to stand en pointe while the four guys spin her one by one. Letestu wobbled a bit in her effort to do the move. I was okay with it due to the difficulty but others the others were like "But she was selected at audition! She should have been able to do it and do it properly!" That's how I feel about Lorina Gore's Queen of the Night (or Queen of the Stars, which was how she was called in the production). QoN is probably THE most difficult role in Opera. There are two arias with 5 high Fs, one in O Zittre Nicht and four in Der Holler Rache. You can imagine my horror when Gore's voice cracked and didn't hit the high F in the first aria. No one around me seemed particularly concerned though so I thought I imagined it. It bothered me enough to ask the others during intermission when it was confirmed that they too heard it. I was so worried the same thing was going to happen in Der Holle Rache, truly my heart never beat so fast during an opera before. I'm pleased to say she did manage to get them although she wobbled other bits. But this brings me to the anecdote at the start of this paragraph. If her voice couldn't handle the colouratura, why was she selected at audition?

Arrrrgh, I feel so bad for not loving it! And for complaining about a soprano not being able to pull off the hardest role in opera repertoire! But.....argh!!!

So here's a very poor quality recording of Sumi Jo doing Der Holle Rache in 1992.

(photo source)