Word: tamino
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...With an opera reveling in artifice, audiences may have trouble distinguishing the two at first. But Mozart's final and most popular work - in which Egyptian prince Tamino (Kim) is enlisted by the Queen of the Night (Farrugia) to rescue her daughter Pamina (Matthews) from a secret sect - is also about how appearances can be deceiving. And amidst all the stage pyrotechnics of the new production, Freeman's main focus has been on the singers. "If you don't change the quality of the central performances," he says, "you change nothing...
...vision transported the packed house from the banalities of real life into a divine fantasy realm. The stage, adorned with simple painted backdrops, was awash in pastels, and the singers wore brightly colored costumes (sky blue and gold for Sarastro and his priests, green and red for Tamino). Even the moments of melodrama weren’t allowed to take themselves seriously. The dangerous monster that nearly kills the protagonist during the opera’s opening scene was more Puff the Magic Dragon than fire-spitting beast as it hopped humorously about on two legs...
...music was indeed heavenly. Particularly striking were Michael Schade as Tamino and Hei-Kyung Hong as Pamina. Both possess remarkably clear and lyrical voices whose timbres match seamlessly. Their seemingly identical musical conceptions created the well-blended texture and flexible phrasing that are so crucial for the underlying drama, in which Tamino and Pamina overcome the ordeals of initiation into Sarastro’s order and progress towards enlightenment only through cooperation and mutual support. Their journey was admirably accompanied by the Met orchestra, which played with impeccable precision and clarity...
This is not to say that the performance was unflawed. Conductor Sebastian Weigle’s brisk tempi proved a mixed blessing. While the overture exuded an almost electric energy, other numbers seemed slightly rushed. Tamino and Pamina’s Act II duet could have luxuriated longer in its loving lyricism, and Weigle’s charge into part two of the Queen of the Night’s big first act aria was a bit too fast for soprano Mary Dunleavy, resulting in an awkward adjustment as her coloratura fireworks begin. Nor was Dunleavy vocally perfect...
...arguably Mozart’s most mature and varied music, as a piece of drama it doesn’t always attain the same sublimity. There is, for example, no explanation of why the evil Queen of the Night has at her disposal three virtuous wonder-boys who help Tamino thwart the Queen’s plans after leading him to Sarastro’s temple. Nor is it obvious why Sarastro, that paragon of priestly piety, employs as his prison warden an old lecher bent on ravishing Pamina...