A popular design conception among opera producers is that of no design at all: let’s leave the stage bare, as the backs of flats, the grimy rear brick wall, and the extensions of the proscenium arch into the playing area make such an atmospheric setting. This is the result of fetishising the stage itself, and also appears in the work of the Broadway-reared twin brothers, David and Christopher Alden. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier have worked together for decades, along with the same team of designers, but never in such a stripped-down manner. The monster menacing Tamino was a shadow-puppet, with huge jaws silhouetted on the walls, but then became comically real as the three Ladies’ well-flung firework beheaded it, and a plump serpent head and neck thudded down on the bare boards.
The Ladies were vaudeville tarts in frilly skirts and epauletted jackets, while Nikolaj Borchev as Papageno was dressed in attire that closely matched the first Papageno of them all, Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s librettist and comic singer: in a frayed, feathery yellow linen suit, with a fine 18th century bird cage on his back. The shock of the evening was Thomas Ebenstein as Monostatos, blacked up to the rolling eyeballs and with a fuzzy wig the like of which has not been seen in the London since the Black and White Minstrels. But this was not London, or Paris, or New York (where I can’t imagine Leiser and Caurier getting away with such a thing) but Vienna, where there seems to be a greater tolerance for racial stereotyping. Monostatos’s henchmen were neatly attired in contemporary police uniforms, which magically sprouted spring-loaded tutus at the sound of Papageno’s bells, and they danced off like a Matthew Bourne corps de ballet. The animals who menace Tamino were of a larger scale than usual: a gorilla, a bear, and a splendid rhinoceros – playing the back legs of the rhino at the Staatsoper will no doubt grace some actor’s CV for years to come.
Iride Martínez sang the Queen of Night with accuracy and verve: her smallish but focused voice made light of the complex coloratura of both arias, and her top Fs in “Der Hölle Rache” were neither squeaked nor shrieked but sung out cleanly and clearly. It must be daunting to sing such a role in a house that has heard Edita Gruberová and Lucia Popp, but Martínez went at the high notes and the undulating triplets with the style of a Lipizzaner approaching a difficult bit of dressage, and with no drop in tempo.