hitched to a libretto that capers and lumbers, charms and mystifies, ravishes and preaches. Filled with diverse and fantastical settings and vividly imagined characters that include a seriously scary mother, blabbermouth bird catcher, rapacious Moor, and a veritable Vatican of sober priests, it’s proven irresistible to major visual artists of all stripes. It’s no wonder Marc Chagall, David Hockney, and Julie Taymor, among many others, have been drawn to it. Each, in his or her own way, has sought to both conjure this 1791 work’s glittering, flyaway facets and find a way to make them cohere.
Three years ago, in what it billed as the company’s “first all-digital production,” San Francisco Opera, along with four co-producing companies, enlisted the Japanese artist Jun Kaneko to create a new Magic Flute. Swimming with mobile projections of brightly colored lines, shapes, and polka-dots and stocked with whimsically sculpted costumes, the production returned to the War Memorial Opera House on Oct. 20 for a 10-performance revival run.
At once friendly and frenetic to the eyes, this Flute wants to dazzle even as it seeks to clarify and deflate some of the ponderous, mystical pseudo-theology that threatens to weigh down the second half of the opera. The Emanuel Schikaneder text is sung (and spoken) in S.F. Opera general director David Gockley’s rhyme-happy and sometimes slangy English translation. “Oy vey,” moans Papageno, who also refers to the romantic lead Tamino as a “boy toy.” It’s to this version’s credit that several of the secretive, Masonic-inspired priests actually get a few laughs while they’re marching Tamino, Papageno, and later on Tamino’s beloved Pamina through their tedious trials.
For all its cheery, ingratiating qualities, the show ran into some quicksand on opening night. Two of the challenges were externally imposed, when both Albina Shagimuratova, a headliner Queen of the Night, and one of her three lady courtiers, Jacqueline Piccolino, withdrew due to illness. Soprano Kathryn Bowden stepped into the Queen breach admirably, nailing the two famously athletic arias with precision and a clean if somewhat undercharged tone. The audience rewarded her with the night’s biggest ovations.
Other problems were built in. Lawrence Foster, in his underwhelming company debut as conductor, consistently employed sluggish tempos that strained against the flow of the action and the persistent mobility and highly saturated colors of Kaneko’s designs. Harry Silverstein’s direction, to a first-time viewer, seemed similarly flat-footed. The comic business was often broadly indicated rather than embodied. Dramatic dead zones kept stalling the proceedings.
S.F. Opera Adler Fellow Efraín Solis, his attractive baritone voice notwithstanding, operated in a narrow range as Papageno. He pattered out his wise-cracking one-liners without capturing much of the character’s rustic appeal, spontaneity, or vulnerability. Tenor Gregg Fedderly, as the Moorish henchman Monostatos, sang and acted with vigor, but a buffoonish costume and manner and some of the translation’s more puckish lines (“I’m outta here”) made him less menacing than he might have been. The Three Ladies waved their arms a lot and looked and sounded uneasy. The late cast change couldn’t have helped. Julie Adams was a game replacement in the First Lady role.
The love story came across more successfully. Tenor Paul Appleby, in his company debut, and soprano Sarah Shafer (who gives way to Nadine Sierra for the final six performances), gave solid, shapely performances as Tamino and Pamina. They both projected a youthful, slightly callow demeanor in their early scenes, which gave way to an authentically felt maturity later on. The anguish of thwarted and possibly doomed love came across during Tamino’s trials. Shafer’s voice grew in stature and emotional amplitude. Appleby, too, took on a dramatic and vocal authority as the night progressed.
There were other worthy contributions. Bass-baritone Alfred Reiter, despite the boxy, pom-tom topped costume design that made him and the other priests look slightly ridiculous, was a stern but sympathetic Sarastro. He found a firm vocal footing at the extreme low register the part demands and was quietly convincing as a cleric on the back end of his career. Tamino’s boy soprano guides, whose airborne vehicle looked like linked ice-cream cones, sang their sometimes tricky three-part harmonies beautifully. Michael Sacco, Pietro Juvara, and Rafael Karpa-Wilson did their work with sweet-voiced distinction.
No matter how beguiling it looks, Flute has to move as a musical drama. Too often, on this return visit, the Kaneko production seemed to be at odds with itself. Some of the effects – a stage-filling swarm of Magritte-like discs – were hypnotic to a fault, dwarfing the humans down below. Director Silverstein seemed overawed at times by all the light and color, moving the singers around to no clear purpose, notably in the final trials for Tamino and Pamina. And cute as they were, the little baby-egg chicks that scurried around in Papageno’s giddy love duet with his new wife Papagena (Maria Valdes) trumped the moment. Sight and musical sense, one last time, were out of phase.