A while ago, a friend invited me to watch Mozart’s The Magic Flute performed by U of M voice students and the university’s symphony orchestra. I did not know what to expect since I had never seen an opera before, but I was thoroughly impressed by the production.
The Magic Flute tells the story of Tamino, a prince who tries to rescue his beloved Pamina, a maiden kidnapped by the king Sarastro. However, Tamino soon discovers that Pamina was taken by the king to protect her from her mother, an evil queen. Equipped with a magic flute, Tamino and his bird-catching sidekick, Papageno, go through several trials to prove they are worthy of reuniting with their true love.
The performers were exceptional — the cast members sang beautifully, and I was blown away by Tessa Hartl’s rendition of the “Queen of the Night” aria which is fiendishly difficult due to its high staccato arpeggios. The orchestra was superb and helped set the atmosphere for many of the scenes.
While the opera explores themes such as good versus evil and finding true love, Tracy Dahl, the production’s stage director and an instructor at the Desautels faculty of music, thinks there is more than meets the eye.
“[This is] the classic morality tale of good versus evil, with familiar tropes. But is it as simple as it seems?” she wrote in the concert pamphlet. “The characters are not black and white, good or bad, as not all our characters’ motives are in full view.
“The queen, usually interpreted as an angry, manipulative woman […] is a complex figure; this ‘vengeful shrew’ is also the person, we learned, who took Papageno under her wing after his mother, (who had been one of her ladies) passed away.”
Instead of casting the queen away, like in the original libretto, this adaptation reunites her with Pamina at the end, allowing her to make peace with Tamino and Pamina’s union. In addition to tweaking the plot to tell a more palatable story, the production is also made familiar in other ways. For example, the set design incorporated Manitoban elements such as aspen forests, Tyndall stones and the Manitoba Legislative Building, commonly known as “the leg.”
There is an interesting connection between The Magic Flute and the Manitoba Legislative Building as well. The opera prominently features Masonic ideology and the symbol of three. For instance, it features three sisters, three spirits and Tamino has to go through three trials before reuniting with Pamina. Even the overture is set in a key with three flats and begins with three triumphant fanfares.
Similarly, the Manitoba Legislative Building constructed during a Freemason-dominated provincial government, is laden with Masonic symbols, including two sphinxes that echo the opera’s references to the Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris.
Despite common perceptions of opera as stuffy and outdated, this interpretation of The Magic Flute was anything but.
In the original, one scene shows Tamino playing his magic flute and charming various forest animals. Hilariously, one of the animals charmed by the flute in this production is the infamous Canada goose, and the actor did a convincing job imitating its honk. Papageno also delivered witty, self-aware lines that had the audience roaring with laughter.
Overall, I was impressed by the adaptation of The Magic Flute because of its high production quality. It cleverly incorporated elements that made Mozart’s magnum opus feel more relatable and accessible to those who may not be opera connoisseurs.
Keep up with performances by the Desautels faculty of music at U of M by visiting umanitoba.ca/music/concert-hall-events.
