Ana Durlovski as the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute. Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

At the Metropolitan Opera last week, a fellow critic asked me, “Have you seen The Magic Flute here yet this season?” I said I had not, but soon would. “It’s great,” he said, “just great.” My experience turned out to be the same as his: great, just great.

I saw this show on Saturday night. In the pit was Adam Fischer, the Hungarian conductor (not to be confused with another conductor, Ivan Fischer, his younger brother). He set the tone of the evening with the overture: which was intelligent and musical. Blessedly, it was not too fast. Magic Flute overtures have gotten faster and faster—they are raced through, heedlessly.

Fischer conducted the rest of the opera with the same intelligence and musicality. I will single something out: the beginning of Act II, which was a simple F-major hymn, unforced and pure.

Have I mentioned that this opera is by Mozart? I should. It is.

Tamino was portrayed by Toby Spence (what a Shakespearean name, I’ve always said). He was a surprise to me. I had long thought of him as a sweet-voiced English tenor. He may be that, but he sang strongly, too. In every respect, he was a superb Tamino. His Pamina was Pretty Yende, the South African soprano. She was not immaculate in technique, but her expression made up for everything: sincere, virtuous, and winning.

(Two nights later, this singer gave a recital, which I reviewed here.)

Papageno was Markus Werba, the Austrian baritone. Years ago, I heard him sing this role at the Salzburg Festival, more than once, I think. A friend of mine said, “Why doesn’t he sing at the Met?” I wondered whether the voice was big enough for our cavernous house. It is, I believe.

Werba was charming, as usual, and wonderfully idiomatic. He is both a native German-speaker and, in a sense, a native Mozartean. He has the knack. At one point, he introduced himself as “Geno—Papageno,” just like Sean Connery or one of the others saying, “Bond—James Bond.”

Incidentally, Werba is the great-nephew of the famed accompanist—or “collaborative pianist,” we would say now—Erik Werba.

The Queen of the Night was a discovery for me—the Macedonian soprano Ana Durlovski. Of many Queens of the Night—including famous ones—I have never heard better. Durlovski was pointed and formidable. She has a smallish voice, but it has a lot of “scald” in it. The higher she got—way above the staff—the more beautiful the voice became. And she was uncannily accurate.

Oh, what a boffo Queen of the Night.

Sarastro was the Sarastro of our time, René Pape. I have described his singing for so long, let me describe his talking: There is a lot of talking in this opera, a singspiel, and Pape talks about as richly and authoritatively as he sings.

The production is Julie Taymor’s from 2004. When it premiered, I hailed it as imaginative and delightsome, something that Mozart and his librettist, Schikaneder, would get a kick out of. I have seen it many times since. And maybe I took it for granted, or grew a little grumpy about it. On Saturday night, I was reminded how wonderful it is. The production is whimsical, enchanting, and flat-out funny. It has its serious side, of course, but it does not take itself too seriously—and neither does The Magic Flute. That is, the opera is both amusing and profound. (Frankly, that’s not a bad description of Mozart in general.)

For years, many of us complained about what we regarded as an error in this production: Sarastro—often Pape—sang the holy aria “In diesen heil’gen Hallen” in front of the curtain, and, as he did, scenery was moved behind the curtain. This made a fair amount of noise, spoiling the aria.

Unless I’m mistaken, the Met has modified this part of the production. The disruption is not as great. Still, there is some, and it’s too bad.

But look: Nothing could spoil the fun on Saturday night. It seemed the cast was having a ball, as much fun as anyone in the audience. There was esprit de corps, and joie de vivre. The opera ends with that inimitable scampering music in E flat. Fischer handled it marvelously. I found myself thinking, “I wish Mozart and Schikaneder could have been here tonight. They’d have been pleased.”

I want to give you three footnotes, if I may:

1) When the goddess Isis was first mentioned, I heard a few murmurs, I think—Isis/ISIS.

2) Wikipedia says the following, about Adam and Ivan Fischer: “The two belonged to the children’s choir of Budapest National Opera house, and sang as two of the three boys in” The Magic Flute.

3) About two weeks ago, I had a review of a Marriage of Figaro at the Met. At the end, I said,

 

There is no “best opera,” obviously. Julius Caesar? Fidelio? Parsifal? La traviata? Elektra? But if someone held a gun to your head and threatened to splatter your brains on the sidewalk unless you named the best opera, you could do worse—a lot worse—than to blurt out, “The Marriage of Figaro.” The more you know it, the more you are in awe.

Same with The Magic Flute. I once had the temerity to ask the venerable music critic and scholar Andrew Porter, “Do you have a favorite opera?” Almost before the words were out of my mouth, he said, “The Magic Flute.” So there.

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