Word: papageno
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...flip side, Papageno, played by George Shepherd, stole the show with his energetic and comic display of Falstaffian humor. Shepherd's rendition of Mozart's comic bird catcher with a heart of gold kept the audience howling with his playful comedic routines and impish humor, making up for his mostly inadequate voice. On the whole, his playful antics and spirit added greatly to the production which tended to drag on as the hours progressed...
...Maybe I made a mistake in my career years ago," says Prey, 53, reflectively. "I should probably have switched to more dramatic roles earlier." Outstanding as the guileless Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute, the rakish Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus and the clever Figaro in both Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Prey has unwillingly become typecast as an operatic nice guy. It is understandable. Who can see him as a villain...
...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...
These musical failures were doubly unfortunate because this troupe of singers contains some very fine voices. Of particular note were Daniel Pantano's Papageno, a chubby, winning baritone with plenty of playfulness: Barbara Morash's Queen of the Night, who traversed her role's Alpine vocal peaks of near-yodelling with good control and plenty of voice to spare: and the Three Ladies of Anne Johnson, Penelope Bitzas, and Deborah Harrington, a trio of ethereally beautiful voices. Everyone in the cast was at least vocally adequate for this small-scale production, and it was a shame to watch them...