This gleeful Opera North revival of Mozart’s classic, directed by James Brining and last performed at the Leeds Grand Theatre in 2019, proves yet again that it is still vastly popular with both veteran opera-goers and first-timers, and that it should appeal to children and young people like nothing else in the repertoire. Children are especially important in this inventive and charming production, which uses the accessible and witty English language translation by Jeremy Sams. The production is framed during the overture as the dream of a young girl, seen with a book next to her bed. She puts a disc onto a record player to start the action, beginning with a mime sequence around a banquet table behind her. The guests are the principal characters of the story that follows. Her mother is a frantic gate-crasher, who hugs her after a furious, silent altercation. She is later the not-so-silent Queen of the Night.
As Artistic Director of Leeds Playhouse, this was Brining's first ON commission, and it has led to a number of other collaborations, such as My Fair Lady earlier this year related, it could be argued, to the old tradition of Singspiel which influenced Mozart. Brining is not the first to be influenced by a key quote from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell – “Without contraries there is no progression” which was published at about the same time as the opera’s first performance in Vienna in 1791. The result is a production which is eclectic in a way very different from that of the centuries-old Viennese version in which Papageno, with his relatively coarse comic and folkloric qualities, was put on the same stage as more aristocratic characters. He would have been recognised as being in line with well-known stage buffoons of the time.
Papageno is one of the work's scene-stealers. Here, the birdcatcher was played by bass-baritone Emyr Wyn Jones, who was adept at assuming the kind of calculated awkwardness which was appropriate in both his singing and his movements. He has a seasoned comic’s ability to make well-timed short comments, helped by his Welsh accent. Other scene-stealers included members of the company’s thriving children’s chorus who, dressed in red, moved across the stage in stately lines, looked in on the action from the sidelines, delighted by Papageno’s presence. The “Three Boys” were impressive, looking like members of a scouting group, two of them played by talented girls.
Egor Zhuravskii was a fine Tamino, his impassioned voice dominating the stage with apparent ease, an excellent contrast to Papageno. His rendering of “This portrait is enchantingly beautiful” established his powerful presence early in Act 1. Soprano Claire Lees as Pamina radiated dramatic intensity throughout, with great clarity in her voice, especially when she was being molested by Monostatos, represented most effectively as a squalid and sinister type by tenor Colin Judson, who lacked only a dirty fawn raincoat. Lees’ “Ah, I feel it, it’s disappeared” was full of emotion.
In spite of his beautiful, rich bass voice, Msimelelo Mbali seemed at times to be understating his role as Sarastro, though not in his “O Isis and Osiris”, a terrific invocation. His brotherhood was a very authoritarian cult, its male members good at strong-arming dissidents and its nun-like female members looking like the cast of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale. All the devotees were convincingly played by the always excellent Opera North Chorus. The Queen of the Night was a little more ferocious than ones I have heard before, and coloratura soprano Anna Dennis singing as she proffered a dagger to Pamina was brilliant, the top Fs spot-on in the famous “Hell’s vengeance rages”. Her Three Ladies were startling but funny samurai nurses with light sabres.
Christoph Koncz conducted the Orchestra of Opera North with all the precision required, synchronising well with the action on stage and eliciting nuanced performances from every section, particularly the woodwinds.
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