Word: mozarts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...guidance of Impresario Rolf Liebermann has developed into one of the most creative companies in the world. An opera composer himself (Penelope, School for Wives), Liebermann commissions two new operas a year, lets producers and directors follow their own imaginative flights. Currently, two new productions - a brilliant revival of Mozart's The Magic Flute and the premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's first major stage work in five years - are proving the wisdom of such artistic generosity...
Elfin and Chinese. The Mozart was assigned to Peter Ustinov. Directing a full-length opera for the first time, he tackled The Magic Flute with warnings ringing in his ears. "Some pointed out that it was the most difficult opera of all to stage," said Ustinov. Their point was well taken, since The Magic Flute is a stylistic hodgepodge: there are dazzling coloratura arias, sunny folk songs and slapstick scenes. It is a curious melange, and the fact that it is based on a solemn Masonic morality play only adds to the confusion...
...from the audience when Papageno made his first entrance from the prompter's box. But Heinz Joachim in Die Welt summed up the critics' response: "At long last the Hamburg State Opera has cleaned out both the antiquated conceptions and modern profundity that block the view of Mozart's Magic Flute...
...composer sons-notably Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian and Wilhelm Friedemann -were all attracted to this style. After his death, Bach was mourned as a fine organist and teacher, but for 70 years his reputation as a composer was kept alive only by a few enthusiasts and composers, notably Mozart and Beethoven...
...drafted into the French army at the age of 27, Ponelle had already done work for every major German opera house as well as the Paris and Vienna operas. Quick and versatile, he has designed everything from a production of Hello, Dolly! to a TV version of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, is now talking to the Metropolitan Opera about a 1970 commission. Ponelle earns about $60,000 a year from his designs, lives with his actress wife Margit and son Pierre, 11, in a two-story villa outside Munich...