BWW Reviews: Stellar Production, Good Cast Still Don't Add Up to MAGIC at the Met

A little slapstick here, a little mysticism there, some knockout arias, a love story, parental conflict--put them all together and you have Mozart's DIE ZAUBERFLOTE--better known in these parts as THE MAGIC FLUTE. Add a good cast and a spectacular production with wonderful effects, flying boys, Bunraku-style bears, serpents and other animals and you should have a wonderful evening at the Met. The key word is should, because this week's FLUTE was somehow less than the sum of its parts.

The Julie Taymor production

I remember when this Julie Taymor production was new--an operatic equivalent of her Broadway triumph with THE LION KING--and it worked very well indeed. What happened here? Surely, the cast looked mighty fine on paper. The Pamina, for example, marked the return of soprano Pretty Yende, the South African singer who made such a splash as a last-minute replacement as Adele in LE COMTE ORY; here, she sang well but her lush voice seemed too big for the part and the role seemed an uncomfortable fit dramatically, though she is an easy performer to warm up to.

Soprano Ana Durlovski made her house debut as the Queen of the Night; as they say, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. She had all those spectacular notes that the role demands--nailed every one of them--but seemed to have a mammoth case of stage fright that kept her (and us) off balance, from her recitative starting "O zittre nicht" through to "Der hölle rache."

Pape's big, robust bass

Tenor Toby Spence (Tamino) took a while to warm up--when he made his entrance, his voice sounded two sizes too small for the house; he recovered, though, and did a fine job later on. Rene Pape seemed to be marshalling his forces for Sarastro's big aria in Act II, "In diesen heiligen Hallen"--but with his big, robust bass, even less than full throttle will certainly do. Last but not least, of the principals, baritone Markus Werba was a fine, roustabout Papageno, starting with "Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja" and his interplay with Papagena (Ashley Emerson) in the "Pa-, pa-, pa-" aria was utterly charming. The Queen's three ladies, Amy Shoremount-Obra, Renee Tatum and Margaret Lattimore, were a delightful presence, as were the three boy sopranos playing the flying spirits, Connor Tsui, Sebastian Berg and Andre Gulick.

The great score sounded fine under the Met orchestra and conductor Adam Fischer, though one wonders whether he could have helped the singers bring the performance together a little better. Or was it simply the fact that this production of this opera needed more rehearsals and some time on stage--a luxury that opera houses don't have unless the production is new--to make a decent evening into a much better one?

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Photos: Markus Werba as Papageno and Pretty Yende as Pamina.Ana Durlovski as the Queen of the Night and Pretty Yende as Pamina.

Photo by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

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