The Magic Flute, San Francisco Opera, June 24 2012

This time it really was The Magic Flute and not Die Zauberflöte, as the singspiel was presented in an English translation by San Francisco Opera’s general director, David Gockley. Certain liberties were taken with the text, sometimes to good effect. After the Queen of the Night’s first aria, Tamino wondered, incredulously, “Was that for real?” Papageno did not carry the traditional birdcage on his back; rather he carried a loose wicker frame that held various sizes of white eggs with black speckles, and he explained to Tamino that he practiced sustainable bird-catching. But for the words that were sung, the English translation just didn’t seem to fit the music as well as the original German.

The production was designed by Jun Kaneko, who gave us lots of projections. During the overture, we saw a white surface with many black speckles; as the music progressed, numerous colored lines were drawn across the background, mostly horizontal and vertical. This theme of horizontal and vertical lines continued throughout the performance, except when a large number of ellipses appeared to be generated down low to the rear of the stage, and draw nearer as they moved to the front and top of the stage. It reminded me of an opening scene from Star Wars, in which an immense space ship floats by, directly overhead. The effect was more distracting than offensive, but it added nothing to the music—aside from the Trial by Fire and Trial by Water. Here, projections of wriggling vertical red lines and wiggling horizontal blue lines adequately solved what I imagine is a difficult problem. The most delightful part of the production was the “Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa” duet for Pagageno and Papagena. Half a dozen young children came out, costumed like very young chicks, with very round bodies and tiny little wings that flapped a bit.

Our cast:
Tamino: Alek Shrader
Pamina: Heidi Stober
Papageno: Nathan Gunn
Papagena: Nadine Sierra
Queen of the Night: Albina Shagimuratova
Sarastro: Kristinn Sigmundsson
Monostatos: Greg Fedderly
Conductor: Rory Macdonald
Director: Harry Silverstein

Much buzz surrounded Shagimuratova as Queen of the Night; she did sing superbly but I was most impressed by the Monostatos of Greg Fedderly, who sang strongly, clearly, and simply, without attempting to add a veneer of evil to his voice. Heidi Stober made a fine Pamina; Nathan Gunn acted his role very well, though I found nothing special in his singing. I’ve heard Kristinn Sigmundsson sing better than he did this time. During the overture and orchestral interludes, the orchestra sounded magnificent. I’ll have to list the set design and the translation as detractors, and rate the experience somewhere between a gamma and a beta.