Die Zauberflote

Even though I was born and reared in Cork, a very musical city, I was never really an opera person.
Thanks to the pioneering spirits of Aloys Fleischmann and Joan Denise Moriarty the arts of classical music and dance were well catered for in Cork with institutions like the Cork Orchestral Society and the Cork Ballet Company.
On the Opera front however things were not so impressive.
We were fed large quantities of various light operas, there was always a good house for Merry Widows, Student Princes and anything by Gilbert and Sullivan. To lower the brow a little musicals comedies, especially those by Rogers and Hammerstein were always popular and much loved (by me too, I must say.)
I do remember a terrific production of Traviata in the Palace Theatre and there were, I am sure some others, but, on the whole I think Opera was the poor relation of the performing arts in Cork. Consequently I was fairly ignorant of, and imagined I would be bored by Opera.
My first contact with opera, as an adult, which began to break down this apathetic disinterest, was with Ingmar Bergman’s production of Mozart’s Magic Flute which and I saw on the television on RTE 1 in the late Seventies.
This fabulous production made me a fan, but only of this particular opera.
My relationship with opera has followed a pattern since of really having to listen many times to an opera before the familiarity breeds respect.
I now have a repertoire of probably only six that I truly like but look forward, with much anticipation ,to getting to know some others.

The Magic Flute has however a very special position as my first opera.
Over the years we have managed to come across quite a few productions. Starting with the Bergman, which we have on Video, we also have a, much edited , version from Glyndebourne on Video, we saw a concert version one afternoon in Wexford and, memorably, saw a lavish
and epic production in the Theatre Antique in Orange about 4 years ago.
We also have a stellar production on CD from Deutsche Grammophon which has Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau singing my personal best ever Papageno. This particular double CD set has the most marvellous journey shortening effect when played on the car stereo.

We nearly made it to a production in the Royal Festival Hall some time in the early nineties. We had the tickets, the ferry and our accommodation booked when my chef at the time did the unforgivable and got ill enough to end up in hospital with mysterious virus and all was cancelled. (My feelings of charity to said chef on that occasion had to be dredged , with difficulty, from the very bottom of my immortal soul)

I was finally rewarded for this act of charity this year when I discovered that Opera Ireland were putting on a production of my personal favourite in Dublin this April. I booked my tickets, on the internet, on the very day I first saw it advertised and finally saw this production last Friday.
It was well worth it, both the wait and the long familiarisation.

The production, which was both directed and designed by Achim Freyer from Germany, was truly off the wall.
The birds belonging to the bird catcher Papageno, were rubber ducks, which he inflated with a hand pump as he sang. His Monster was a large inflated snake from which the three ladies, fetchingly dressed in blue body stockings with bathing suits painted on top, saved him by deflating it.
The deceptively simple looking set of three doors, painted by as if by a child, proved to have a myriad variations of usage and opening.
There were elements of Commedia d’ell Arte,street theatre, the circus, slapstick cinema, and just about any theatrical device you could imagine.
Papageno even got great belly laughs throughout the show by producing a little red bird from his fly at opportune moments- it was that sort of production.
The music wasn’t put into second place though. Our own Ailish Tynan who sang Pamina was in great voice, as was Tamino, and the Queen of the Night, if a little wobbly on her lower notes, gave us coloratura trills on the high bits which, as my brother in law Martin Lyes said “ would take the lining off a Teflon pan”.
This, if not a production for purists, (I heard one man, outside the theatre, say it was “a disgrace”) was a great crowd pleaser and put opera right back where it should be in the realm of popular musical theatre.

The great thing about The Magic Flute is that-as if to anticipate the techniques of the writers of Broadway Musicals- whenever there is the least chance that your attention might wander Mozart throws in a show stopper of a song which is not only beautiful but also moves the action along.
This is also the first opera I have been at where they gave subtitles on a screen on top of the stage and I heartily approved. There were a good few Mozartian jokes in the script which I got for the first time because of it.

I loved it, more of the same please.