THE NEW ZEALAND OPERA SOCIETY

NBR New Zealand Opera
St James Theatre, Wellington
Saturday 17 June. 

Review by Simon Tipping 

What an eyeful! This production is such a visual, fantastical feast that the eye threatens to overwhelm the ear at times. Gerald Scarfe’s sets and costumes are stunning. Colours and shapes riot and dazzle, and we are taken on a visual journey which encompasses Egypt, Mayan Central America, Japan and Polynesia, to name only the more obvious visual references in the opera. Scarfe’s fecund mind mixes all these influences up in one pot and pulls out whatever colourful and curious idea floats to the top.

And why not? The opera’s story has very mixed parentage, and commentators over the years have been able to trace it back to Egyptian mythology, Masonic ritual, Enlightenment philosophy and anti-Hapsburg politics. Similarly, Mozart’s music is an amalgam of several musical styles, from high-flown opera seria down to pantomime. So in the Magic Flute it seems, anything goes!

Director Stanley M. Garner and lighting designer Michael Knapp have gone along with this melange, adding some cleverly updated dialogue, a colourful array of lighting effects and a pacey production to Sir Peter Hall’s original concept. A remarkable pyramid set, and some bizarre but appealing animals are two more of the production’s many magic touches.

The cast was predominantly young, and though there were no outstanding soloists, most were satisfying. Adrian Strooper was a young Tamino, light of voice and growing more confident as the evening wore on. It’s a difficult role – in danger of being two-dimensional, but he managed to achieve more humanity in the trial scenes. Tiffany Speight, his Pamina, was my pick of the voices – strong, flexible and beautifully coloured.

The opera’s success often stands or falls on Papageno – the one really human character. Richard Burkhard was excellent, with a strong and colourful voice to go with his multi-coloured plumage, exemplary diction in both speech and song, and a sure sense of comic timing. While it was a good decision to have the spoken dialogue in English, it would have been better if the singers could all have made their speech intelligible. Several were not easy to understand, the Queen of the Night and the First Priest being two of the worst offenders.

The Three Ladies (Morag Atchison, Aivale Cole and Kate Spence) buzzed and bumbled around the stage comically, managing to keep well on target musically. Their boss, the Queen (Penelope Randall-Smith), easily executed her vocal pyrotechnics with a remarkably full voice. Her appearances were also visually arresting – I particularly liked the low full moon gazing balefully on her and her conspirators in the last scene. The other trio, the Spirits, were not so successful. While it’s good to see boys in the role rather than sopranos and contraltos, the opening night boys’ intonation needed a brush-up. Their heavy horn-rimmed glasses also made them look a little too severe and nerd-like. (Did they have video games up there in their flying swan?)

The basses; the Speaker (Rodney Macann) and Sarastro (Graeme Broadbent) were imposing and dignified, though Broadbent’s voice lacked the dark quality necessary to establish Sarastro’s stature fully. Papagena was beautifully clothed in feathers like her mate, displaying a bubbly personality but a rather muffled voice. Monostatos and his henchmen were another of Gerald Scarfe’s tours de force, with misshapen green cartoon-style bodies, and accoutrements which suggested a cross between sumo wrestlers and Turkish harem attendants. Monostatos himself (Phillip Rhodes), sang and spoke strongly and moved with disgusting suggestiveness. His dialogue had been rendered politically correct by making him complain of being green rather than black. (Similarly, the surtitles omitted several of the more sexist statements of Sarastro and his followers).

Michael Vinten’s chorus, used mainly in the ritualistic chorale and movement of the Priests, were excellent. Their sound was full-bodied and flexible, and the timing of their many formal processions could not be faulted. The Vector Wellington Orchestra did well most of the time, but I did miss that edge of confidence which their playing may well have by the end of the season. Conductor Alistair Dawes gave a strong lead throughout and allowed a welcome flexibility of tempo to complement the rest of this fantastical production.