Word: fluting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Magic Flute...
FOLLOWING THE inauspicious debut of wunderkind Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1791, the music critic of the Berlin Musikalisches Wochenblatt remarked that the opera had "not won the much hoped for and expected acclaim, on account of its inferior text and subject matter." Even so, the magical spectacle and symbolism that makes up what is perhaps Mozart's most popular opera continues to win the hearts of many music-lovers and theater-goers alike. That is, when the opera is performed well, which is definitely not the case at the Lowell House Opera's current rendition...
Mozart's idea of a grown-up fairy tale, The Magic Flute opens with the fair-haired Tamino, a self-proclaimed lost "son of royalty," being overtaken by a ferocious fire-breathing evil serpent represented in this production by some sort of kite. Fainting at such a sight, Tamino is saved by three bewitching and mysterious ladies--messengers of the "star radiant" Queen of the Night, who will continue to play a large role in Tamino's life...
...Queen, it seems, has chosen Tamino to help her retrieve her beautiful daughter Pamina from the evil clutches of the Sorceror Sarastro, the Queen's devilish adversary. Setting out for Sarastro's palace with comedic bird-catcher Papageno for company and a magic flute to charm away all evils, Tamino eventually finds Pamina unscathed and virtue intact but ready for love once the right man has come along...
...heights, he has, miraculously, not distanced our emotions. Somehow, each figure in the vast canvas has a particular and touching life of his own. Kurosawa gives the last shots of Ran to one of these minor victims of great men's grand designs. A blind youth has lost the flute that was the sole consolation for his affliction and the painting of Buddha that was his talisman. Now he wanders to the edge of a precipice, oblivious of being poised unseeing between life and death. His condition symbolizes for Kurosawa the human condition. The fusion of metaphorical weight and simple...