Magic to do

experienceopera.org

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The Memorial Day weekend is almost here. For most of us, that means cookouts, family gatherings, and other varieties of making merry. For us opera lovers, though, it also means a different type of celebration: opening night at Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

Since 1976, Opera Theatre has been presenting productions that have drawn press from all over the world to the main stage of the Loretto-Hilton Center. I've seen most of them over the decades and have been reviewing them consistently since KDHX went on the air over 25 years ago. I've been entertained, moved, excited, annoyed, and even infuriated, but rarely bored.

Now, if your image of opera comes from pop culture, you might find that last sentence surprising. Surely opera is just a bunch of overweight Italians bellowing away in foreign languages for a bunch of bored socialites, right? Well, I won't say that I have never seen productions like that (mostly in other cities), but only almost never at Opera Theatre.

That's because Opera Theatre, as its name implies, understands that opera is a form of theatre, and that dramatic values are just as important as musical ones. The singers are also capable actors, are generally physically right for their roles, and sing their roles in English.

Granted, the company also provides projected English text stage left and right, but that's because opera singers do not, in general, articulate as well as their musical theatre counterparts (possibly for very good reasons; see Roger Highfield's article in the Telegraph from 2004 and an interesting 2010 blog post by "Porcamiseria"). That doesn't change the fact that at Opera Theatre the libretto is as important as the music.

The 2014 season offers a world premiere, a local premiere, and two returning favorites. You can see a complete list at the Opera Theatre web site. Right now I'd like to just drop a few well chosen bytes on you about the first production, Mozart's “The Magic Flute.”

Written towards the end of the composer's sadly brief life (Mozart had only a few months to live when it premiered in September of 1791), “The Magic Flute” was intended not for an audience of nobles at court but rather for ordinary folks at a suburban theater that was closer in ambiance to a tavern. A singspiel with spoken dialog instead of recitatives and a text in German instead of the fashionable Italian, the work is a fantastic tale of a pair of lovers who must undergo a series of magical trials in order to attain enlightenment before they can be married. The libretto by dramatist, impresario and actor Emanuel Schikaneder (who produced and performed in the premiere) is filled with Masonic symbolism (Mozart was a lodge member) and is, as Peter Branscombe and Stanley Sadie have written, "above all an opera of the Enlightenment. In it, the forces of darkness and light are counterposed: the former in the person of the Queen of the Night and her entourage, the latter in that of Sarastro and his priestly community, which erects temples to Wisdom, Nature and Reason."

Isaac Mizrahi
Photo By George Chinsee

The production's director is Isaac Mizrahi, who rose to fame as a fashion and costume designer. His entry into the world of operatic direction is relatively recent. His 2010 “A Little Night Music” for Opera Theatre, with its fairies and surreal imagery, raised a few eyebrows and, based on his public statements so far, his “Magic Flute” might do the same.

That's because he's setting the opera not in the magical realm of the libretto but rather in the more prosaic location of a motion picture soundstage. The logic behind this, as he stated in an interview for stltoday.com, is that "the only place I can suspend disbelief about magic taking place is a soundstage". Will this make sense on stage? We'll see.

In addition, Mr. Mizrahi has elected to make some changes to the original text in order to make The Queen of the Night—usually seen as the representative of Darkness and therefore the villain of the piece—more sympathetic (Mizrahi sees her as being “like Greta Garbo”), and to tone down the text's negative attitudes towards women generally. In this he has the support of his conductor (and Mozart scholar) Jane Glover, who takes the position that the anti-woman attitudes of the libretto are something the composer felt he had to put up with rather than a reflection of his own views. Her 2005 book Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music is highly regarded.

On this, as with the setting, the jury is out until we see how it all plays. There is, I think, a danger in making the Queen too sympathetic in that it could undermine the pro-Enlightenment foundation of the work but, as the old wheeze goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

The essentials: You can get your heaping helping of “The Magic Flute,” along with the rest of the Opera Theatre season, at the company web site. Opening night is this Saturday, May 24. The season runs through June 28. For the full festival experience, come early and have a picnic supper on the lawn or under the refreshment tent. You can bring your own food or purchase a gourmet supper in advance from Ces and Judy's. Drinks are available on site as well, or you can bring your own. For more information: experienceopera.org or 314-961-0644.