Edinburgh Festival 2006 (2) : Mozart, Die Zauberföte – a co-production between I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, Teatro Comunale di Ferrara and Teatro Comunale di Modena – Daniele Abbado (director), Claudio Abbado (conductor). Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 31.08. 2006 (JPr)

 

 

Perhaps I was just having a bad day but after not enjoying Anne Schwanewilms’lunchtime recital as much as I had hoped, I went on to the Edinburgh Festival Theatre and found this evening a great disappointment.  Claudio Abbado’s outstanding recent recording of Die Zauberflöte had obviously added to the hype for these two Edinburgh Festival performances of his son’s production and expectations ran high. Indeed, the whole thing was given a tremendous ovation by a majority home-town audience starved of international standard opera (apart from at festival time) because of the cash-strapped Scottish Opera’s recent  infrequent outings. For me however, this production  had all the star-power and sophistication of some East European touring group and even saying that might be doing a disservice to those tourers that  strive for high standards.

 

The production  featured  a darkened stage with sliding black back panels and so provided a fairly dull mis en scène from set designer Graziano Gregori, costume designer Carla Teti and lighting designer Guido Levi. Occasionally there were interesting images trundled on-stage such as when the Queen of the Night first appeared seemingly suspended like some prehistoric insect in a large circle of amber. A large lion’s mouth was Monostatos’s lair and in the trials scene there was an imaginative use of fire on stage. On the minus side,  the persistent use of doors (trap or otherwise) and the regular  lowering of a metal bridge palled a bit when employed more than necessary -  as did the  somewhat  wobbly use of character dolls (for the three flying boys in Act I and  for Tamino and Pamina undergoing their trials in Act II). Too many pantomime animal masks accompanied  the (intentionally?) comical  monster and descended from this low  point into further campery with  male  flunkies stripped (for some reason)  to the waist. To be blunt, this  was distinctly amateurish production and the many experienced singers, well cast as they were, often looked ‘cast adrift’ on stage since they were given little direction about what to do when not the centre of attention.

 

The three ladies (Caroline Stein, Heidi Zehnder and Anne-Carolyn Schlüter) looked lovely in gowns split to waist level and showing a well-toned leg on stage (and also on the posters for the opera), however, when singing, they were not always so beautifully uniform in their tuning.

 

The Hungarian soprano Erika Miklósa is a specialist Queen of the Night and she has performed the role in a list of the world’s major opera houses. Her uncanny bald-capped impersonation of Scottish diva Annie Lennox seemed more than apt in this city. The top Fs were all there and she portrayed a dangerous ‘Wicked Witch’ figure well, but there was just a hint of less than thought-through singing and mere vocal pyrotechnics as she notched up another Queen on her career path.

 

Eric Cutler was bit of a wimp as Tamino but isn’t that always the case these days? He seemed most in need of a strong directorial hand but did not get it. However his tenor voice had a pleasing timbre but, and this is just me probably, I like to hear the ringing tones of a future Wagnerian in the best Taminos and for me this was missing in Mr Cutler’s otherwise fine voice. I suppose this wasn’t true also for Stuart Burrows who I saw many times and it is probably Siegfried Jerusalem who was the best I have seen.

 

Julia Kleiter sang well as Pamina with some delicate phrasing in a beautiful nuanced performance but again hers was another weak characterisation. In the modern way, she declared her love for Tamino at one side of the stage while he was at the opposite, which didn’t really help

 

The London-born Sylvia Schwartz was a spirited Papagena and did the best she could in this small, yet important role. Her Papageno (Andrea Concetti) was to my mind miscast. He has looked and sounded a fine Leporello but there must be something extrovert and otherworldly about Papageno and Concetti seemed more like the embodiment of Chico Marx,  the most knowing and lascivious of the famous brothers.  He missed much of the comedy in Act I though was rather more relaxed in Act II and the highlight was when he took a sip wine of from someone in the orchestra after ‘Mir ware jetzt ein gut Glas Wein das grösste Vergnügen’, handing it back with a clearly heard ‘Thank you, sir!’ The first exponent of this role for me on stage,  was the young Thomas Allen and undoubtedly the best (so far) was the inimitable Hermann Prey.

 

In the smaller pivotal parts, Andreas Bauer was a forthright Speaker, Georg Zeppenfeld’s voice reached right down to his boots to bring us a suitably stentorian Sarastro and the villainous Monostatos of Kurt Azesberger seemed like an Alberich or Klingsor of the future,  since neither of these roles surprisingly features in his short biography so far.

 

The best singing? Well,  maybe it was the Arnold Schoenberg Choir and soloists from the Tölzer Knabenchor who were meticulously schooled and well-drilled. Three were the featured boys and each of them who could have given their more senior colleagues a lesson how to continue the drama when not actually singing.

 

Finally, what about Claudio Abbado himself and his youthful Mahler Chamber Orchestra? I ruminated on exactly when they had actually arrived in Edinburgh and what time they had had to rehearse and make adjustments for the Festival Theatre. The Maestro kept a tight rein on all vibrato throughout and after a very hesitant overture and while the musicianship of the chamber orchestra shone through all that they did, the orchestra never seemed to recover completely from this beginning. The steady pace maintained throughout seemed to strip the piece of lightness, magic disappeared and without the magic in this Singspiel what are we left with?  Not a lot.

 

Certainly it is amazing that the PC police these days allow spoken and sung dialogue that includes the following; ‘If there are black birds there must be black men’, ‘Women do little but chatter a lot’, ‘Women need a man if they are to leave their domain’, ‘Pull yourself together, be a man!’ … ‘No I’d rather be a girl!’ and ‘White is beautiful -  I must kiss her!’ All of these were from the surtitles and the last was uttered by Monostatos (the evil ‘Moor’!) who  had only half his face blacked up as a nod toward what is acceptable these days. That image just about summed up my ambivalent response to a very dispiriting evening.

 

 

 

Jim Pritchard