State Opera premiere
The new “Magic Flute”: Survival in the house of horrors!
Barbora Horáková's new production of Mozart's "Magic Flute" earned cheers at the Vienna State Opera, but also fierce boos - ovations for Bertrand de Billy on the podium and some of the singers!
Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, Dracula biographer Bram Stoker or the Wolverine fathers would probably have fun with Barbora Horáková's new "Magic Flute": when the curtain rises, Mozart's three boys cycle around a rotten, dilapidated residence. Somewhere in Döbling? Thrills - that's what the louts are looking for. And they find it in set designer Falko Herold's horror villa with its symbols of death, barred cages and staircases leading into dangerous worlds of torture and dreams. Suddenly, like in a horror movie, countless doors open. A maelstrom draws the three of them with magical force into the villa's chambers of horror, into the strange bar of the initiates or to the grand entrance of Sarastro, who floats down from Olympian heights on a crescent moon in the blue robe of the Queen of the Night. The three witness how a smacking - projected - giant snake threatens Prince Tamino, but also questionable moral tests involving love, life and death. And how the Queen of the Night urges her daughter Pamina to murder Sarastro. They carry their souls strapped to their backs. Horáková creates high tension. It is true that one misses popular interludes such as the animal parade or many popular gags in the willfully deleted dialogues. But Horáková tells the story clearly, cleverly, a little removed from the Masonic ideology of the work and with flair - also for a young audience!
After the uninspired, clueless "Magic Flute" productions of the State Opera by Joachim Herz, Marco Arturo Marelli or Leiser & Caurier in recent decades, we finally experience an exciting, thoroughly practicable production with clever character management in magically atmospheric tableaux. For the big test scene, when Tamino and Pamina have to prove their mythical destiny for each other in the test of fire and water, I would have liked less banal gray-on-gray imagery, however. And I find it ridiculous that the lovers have to carry their aged second selves around on their humps, who finally go to heaven - motto: "Sell my clothes, I'm going to heaven". Horáková doesn't come up with anything very effective for the end: The Queen of the Night has the temple stormed, but then immediately joins Sarastro for the big reconciliation party.
Musically, Bertrand de Billy saves the premiere after Franz Welser-Möst's cancellation due to illness. He had the State Opera Orchestra firmly under control, producing powerful and beautiful-sounding music; some parts in the chorus sounded unsteady or shaky.
The cast is only partially convincing: Julian Prégardien's Tamino lacks tenoral brilliance and intimacy, the voice repeatedly sounds narrow, his "Bildnis" aria uninspired: The dialogues are colorless. "Pamina" Sláva Zámečníková impresses with the elegance of her noble soprano voice, the warmth of her timbre and her noble phrasing. For the Spaniard Serena Sáenz as the Queen of the Night, dramatic effects are probably the most important thing. The coloratura in the two arias is not always perfect. As always, Georg Zeppenfeld is reliable as the dignified, heroic Sarastro. Ludwig Mittelhammer is a real natural Papageno with a beautiful baritone, his dear Papagena Ilia Staple is on a par, politically correct - instead of Mohr a coal shoveler - "Monostatos" Matthäus Schmidlechner, the "Speaker" Jochen Schmeckenbecher is condemned to be a somewhat pale barkeeper. The three ladies and the harnesses are rather pale.
This article has been automatically translated,
read the original article here.
Kommentare
Liebe Leserin, lieber Leser,
die Kommentarfunktion steht Ihnen ab 6 Uhr wieder wie gewohnt zur Verfügung.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
das krone.at-Team
User-Beiträge geben nicht notwendigerweise die Meinung des Betreibers/der Redaktion bzw. von Krone Multimedia (KMM) wieder. In diesem Sinne distanziert sich die Redaktion/der Betreiber von den Inhalten in diesem Diskussionsforum. KMM behält sich insbesondere vor, gegen geltendes Recht verstoßende, den guten Sitten oder der Netiquette widersprechende bzw. dem Ansehen von KMM zuwiderlaufende Beiträge zu löschen, diesbezüglichen Schadenersatz gegenüber dem betreffenden User geltend zu machen, die Nutzer-Daten zu Zwecken der Rechtsverfolgung zu verwenden und strafrechtlich relevante Beiträge zur Anzeige zu bringen (siehe auch AGB). Hier können Sie das Community-Team via unserer Melde- und Abhilfestelle kontaktieren.