It’s always a treat to go to the opera at the Hackney Empire. What you see there is invariably a touring opera company, unencumbered by the burden of lavish resources, dealing creatively with the need to carry all its paraphernalia on its back around the country or continent, and hence required to focus with enthusiasm and economy on making the work come to life. In this, English Touring Opera found themselves marvellously assisted for this Magic Flute by a splendidly varied sell-out audience, on the whole similarly unencumbered by wealth and pretension.
The wonderfully ambitious ETO is perhaps at the more sophisticated end of the spectrum of touring companies, but nevertheless its performance of The Magic Flute still managed to hold on to that raw feeling of fun and delight which, far from intimidating the audience, invites them in and makes Mozart’s piece such a joy to experience. Not that the production is entirely without pretension: after a strikingly incisive launch of the overture, the cast, in black, struck silhouette tableaus of increasingly lascivious decadence around the bewildered figure of Tamino and, before lining up to become the predatory serpent, they raise Tamino masks. We are invited to consider that the serpent is Tamino’s own unwholesome nature with which he is to struggle henceforward, and in this we gain the germ of an idea - but lost in confusion is the drama of the sudden slaughter of the serpent by Three Ladies, and Papageno’s lie that he had slaughtered it fails to register without its dead body lying before us. Later, in the Act II, there are some shenanigans with standard lamps and lightshades, objects that remain irremediably prosaic, and hardly frolic as the presumably intended props to a domestic fairy-tale. But these are quibbles, and I am done with them. On the whole, the production is a delight, with some stunning coups de théâtre.
The stage is a three level interior, rising to a small “stage within a stage” from which the Queen of the Night makes her dramatic entrance but, as she descends towards us, her iridescent blue train billows out to fill the whole stage. It’s a magnificent sight and very well accomplished. There are six side doors and an array of trap doors through which a profligate array of props and people come and go, giving good account of the fertility of librettist Schikaneder’s invention.
In terms of acting and singing, in this night’s cast the women were the stronger suit. The three ladies, Camilla Roberts, Amy J Payne and Helen Johnson, were excellent in both voice and playing of their parts, their swift changes of conduct accomplished with startling conviction. Samantha Hay’s Queen of the Night was every bit as forthright and spine-tingling as it has to be, and Anna Patalong’s heartbroken Pamina gave us moments of spellbinding beauty, rich soft singing in her laments, under the mistaken impression that Tamino has turned against her.