Der Zaubereuro

[muckefuck]

Here's a little exchange I had at least twice in the past week:

Me: Saturday I'm going to the opera.
NotMe: What are you going to see?
Me: Zauberflöte.
NotMe: Never heard of it.
Me: "Magic Flute" in English.
NotMe: Oh that one!

This is what living with a German-speaking opera enthusiast will do to you. On the plus side, I've inadvertently stumbled on a first approximation to answering the question whether someone of my acquaintance "knows opera" or not.

Not only does this mark the third time I've seen Z...er, this particular Mozart opera at the Lyric, it's also the third time I've seen this exact same production. Seriously, what's up with that? (I think this quote in the accompanying programme from outgoing artistic director William Mason may shed some light: "Christopher Alden's Rigoletto was one of the most ingenious and well-thought-out productions I've seen, although the public didn't like it at all." My reaction, as a member of the public: "[T]he young directors had the 'brilliant' idea of setting the action in a Victorian gentlemen's club, an idea so half-baked even they abandoned it two-thirds of the way through and reverted to traditional form for the last act".)

But more on that later. The best thing about this version was the cast. The worst thing about it was also the cast. On the plus side, they brought a lot of vigour. In particular the Three Ladies (two of whom were Ryan Opera Center members) found a way to make their characters very animated and amusing without crossing the line into slapstick. And Stéphane Degout as Papageno was a marked improvement over whoever it was we had last time. I was put off by his singing when he very first appeared, but I soon warmed to it as he won me over with his speaking bits. For a Frenchman, he has amazingly good German.

But he was really the only singer in a young cast composed chiefly of Lyric Opera débutants who had a big enough voice. The rest were singing "for a house about two thirds the size", in the words of Nuphy. Nicole Cabell as Pamina and Rodell Rosel as Monostatos were the best at holding their own against him; the biggest disappointment was Audrey Luna as the Queen of the Night. Not only does she have a small voice but a small body as well--a head shorter than her putative daughter and half the size of the Ladies with their Cinderella-sisters hoop skirts. All that added up to a real lack of stage presence and an entrance that was seriously underwhelming.

To her credit, she did make it through one of the most ballbreaking arias in the modern repertoire, but that's all she did. As monshu says, "It should sound effortless; you shouldn't be holding your breath wondering if she's get through it." But that's exactly what I was doing. Afterwards, Nuphy advised me to check out Diana Damrau's performance. Wow.

So between the familiar production and a vocally uninspiring cast, I had plenty of time to think about how one would go about staging the opera in such a way as to minimise the outrageous 18th century racism rather than go out of the way to play it up, as this one seems to do. What's the point of giving the Moors green skin (altering the libretto to match) if you're still going to give them frizzy afros, "native" clothing, and grass huts to live in? That kind of dodge does't work when a pop artist pulls it and it doesn't work here.

I thought to myself, If they have to have another skin colour, why not make it blue and have them all be Smurfs? My next thought was, Wouldn't that make Sarastro Belgian? And does that make the Temple of Wisdom EU headquarters in Brussels? But Nuphy made a good point during the intermission that there's no need to interpret Monostatos' references to his blackness as indicating skin colour rather than character.

I shared with him my idea of remaking the allegory about embracing Enlightenment ideals into an allegory about embracing EU membership. (The Queen of the Night is Mother Russia, the Moors become bungling EU border guards, Papageno and Papagena are Arab/Turk/Roma as a dig at Eurabia, etc.) He didn't like it, because he doesn't think it's an opera that can survive updating. He's got a point: When's the last time you saw anything where there was a boardroom full of stuffy old white men and these were the good guys? But I'm not giving up yet. I really think a successful satirisation of the accession process would carry the audience over the hurdles.

Comments

[mlr.livejournal.com]

Have you ever seen the Bergman film?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Not all the way through I don't think. I was remembering it at times during the performance and thinking how I'd like to. Hagegård makes such an appealing Papageno!

[mlr.livejournal.com]

It's a beautiful little film, very sensitive to the theater, to the 18th century, and to the scale of the piece. I was curious what you thought of how he handled the racist elements etc.

I googled to see if Kathleen Battle ever played the Q. of the N., her voice would have been so suited to the aria. Apparently she played Pamina at the Met before she became persona non grata. She would also have excelled at that role.

No light no light is disturbingly appropriate. (Of course I had never heard of it.)

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Right now would be an interesting time to field a pro-EU opera... The wikipedia summary as usual makes it sound utterly demented - albeit Masonic-demented, which gives it the pass that it's probably about purification and transformation of the soul and all that, so the whole light/dark thing, so unfortunate in our own enlightened times, is probably more incidentally than intentionally racist. Perhaps it could all be about Fiscal responsibility, the "black" characters being tranformed into Greeks and Italians, and Pamina as The Spirit of Angela Merkel offering the fruits of virtuous economic restraint. Then the real mystery is, who is Tamino? Wayward Europe? Sarko? The Virtuous Leader to Come (whoever that might be)?

My favourite alterna-racism product this week is Carcosa, which features colour-coded barbarians not unlike the colour-coding of "security levels" in Paranoia, but buries that potential Pandora's box at the bottom of another, made out of Cthulhoid rituals of power involving rape and murder. It strikes me as the perfect setting for an opera about the US Primaries. Caucosa, perhaps.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Nuphy suggested Merkel for Queen of the Night as well. I suppose Tamino could be whatever country is left that's toterring but hasn't kipped over. It might be a different characterisation every week!

[bunj.livejournal.com]

How about this for "Der Zaubereuro":

Tamino - Papademos, or perhaps Rajoy or Kenny
Papageno - Berlusconi
Pamina - Merkel
Queen of the Night - Thatcher?
Sarasto - Draghi, or perhaps some other Eurocrat
Monostatos - Sarko

At the end of the opera, Papagena (as some sort of embodiment of fiscal responsibility) could dress Papageno in a new costume, one that makes him look more like Monti.

Unfortunately, I can't think of a PIG which hasn't had a change of government recently, so we can't have a Tamino who has come to realize the importance of fiscal rectitude.

Mostly, I like Berlusconi as Papageno. That works on a number of levels.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

The more I think about it, the more I think tying the production to a specific kind of enlightenment is too limiting. I would probably go with a post-modern abstract view, as awful as that sounds. You want something that signals the allegory, so you want to use visual clues that a modern audience would get (incorporating modern symbology). That would probably mean a magpie approach, which would, in itself, signal that this is all Allegory.

Ideally, I would probably turn this all over to Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean and see what they come up with.