Word: fluted
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MOZART'S MAGIC FLUTE, that innocently expansive, made-up fairy tale cut with slices of Masonic mysticism, is probably the most durable of all great operas: you could mount it in a barn or a basilica with equal success. It's such a hodge-podge of childish humor, didactic verses, and obscure allegory that no director's grand interpretation is likely to encompass its entirety. In his film version, Ingmar Bergman--no shirker from directorial complexity--paid tribute to the sufficiency of Mozart's music to bear The Magic Flute's inconsistencies; he presented a filmed record of a workmanlike...
...Magic Flute, in other words, is more folk opera than grand opera, and in the absence of rigid performance traditions, each director can pretty much do with it what he wishes. And so David Prum's idea--staging the whole thing on a giant subway-entrance staircase, complete with fluorescent "Red Line" sign on top--in itself does no violence to the work. Nothing in The Magic Flute rules out this approach. But after three hours of characters scurrying up and down the stairs and rotating the structure on its metal-pipe supports, nothing emerges from The Magic Flute...
...construction. But that's the last we hear of it. It's never explained or worked through, aside from the vague relationship between the secret society of Freemasons and the actual work of masonry, and the even vaguer relationship between Masonic ritual and parts of The Magic Flute--which Prum does not underscore, but parodies, giving his priests of Isis red-plastic horns to blow and coffee-can censers. Later, Prum projects photos of Widener to illustrate Prince Tamino's approach to the Temple of Wisdom...
...FELT DISAPPOINTED and unhappy observing this process, because the manifold flaws in Prum's Flute seemed to spring more from logistical problems, shortages of money, inadequate rehearsals, and the like, than from a hopelessly flawed conception. At moments, the subway-staircase flashed into sensibility--as, for example, a disheveled Papageno leered after business-suited women hurrying down the stairs. Somewhere in here there is a fascinating avant-garde Magic Flute piping away, waiting to be heard...
...when you unveil a performance to the public, and charge money for it, a certain amount of competence ought to be expected--if not beautiful playing, at least the right notes: if not subtle interpretation, then spirited exuberance. I found myself wincing during this Magic Flute far too frequently for comfort or enjoyment at squeaky strings, raucously blaring horns, and botched entrances. The orchestra was situated in Lehman Hall's balcony, and--from the inability of singers and players to match their voices and notes--I can only assume that the singers were unable to see conductor Theo Saye...