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It's fitting that Mozart's last-staged and most phantasmagorical opera, The Magic Flute, would eventually be adapted by another conjurer of fantastical worlds, Maurice Sendak. The late author and illustrator of the children's classic Where the Wild Things Are was an avid Mozart fan, and when he was approached in 1980 by stage director Frank Corsaro to design a new Flute production, he jumped at the chance. After Sendak created more than 60 paintings based on the opera's plot, set designer Neil Peter Jampolis and backdrop painter Michael Hagen adapted his ideas into scenery and costumes for the show. Perhaps second only to artist Marc Chagall's trippy 1967 interpretation of Flute, the Sendak version became one of the most visually inventive takes on the opera ever mounted.
Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Portland Opera general director Christopher Mattaliano—then a young stage director—helmed dozens of revivals of the production, working closely with Corsaro and Sendak. But disaster struck, literally, when the sets, stored in a warehouse in Florida, were destroyed by Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Undeterred, Mattaliano enlisted Jampolis and Hagen to re-create the pieces they'd originated decades earlier. He calls the current show "a world re-premiere."
The tale of a prince and an eccentric bird-catcher who set off together to find love and enlightenment, Flute is compelling not so much for its allegorical, at times tedious, plot, as it is for its effervescent melodies. Particularly unforgettable are two devilishly virtuosic arias sung by the Queen of the Night (memorably excerpted in the film Amadeus), a meltingly lyrical ode to desolation sung by the queen's daughter, Pamina, and the sepulchral bass notes of the mysterious high priest Sarastro. Arguably the most buoyant music of all comes late in the second act, when the bird-catcher fantasizes about finding a female bird-catcher to be his wife. Breaking out his magic flute and bells (the piece is scored for glockenspiel), he joins the orchestra in a tune that encapsulates the dainty joie de vivre that is Mozart's hallmark.
This production kicks off Portland Opera's first-ever summer festival season, which runs from May to July. It's a departure from the traditional autumn/winter/spring season and an effort to attract larger audiences. In the spirit of PICA's TBA Festival, Portland Opera is hoping theatergoers will prefer a short but potent season to more drawn-out programming. Will the new approach pay off? "It's too early to tell," says Ingrid Arnett, the Opera's spokesperson. "We expect to learn more in the fall once audiences have had a chance to experience the change."
Whatever happens, it won't be because the company didn't put its best foot forward. Flute is a chestnut perennially popular with adults and children alike, with a "cute" factor bound to be enhanced by Sendak's sets and costumes. Adding to its accessibility, this production will be sung in an English translation, not the original German. Because let's face it, when you're listening to the Queen of the Night, "The wrath of hell boils in my heart!" is easier to understand than "Der Höllerache kocht in meinem Herzen!" Which brings us to the opera's darker themes. The libretto, written by Emanuel Schikaneder in 1791, touches on issues of racism, cults, creepy quasi-Masonic mysticism and the Manichaean battle between good and evil. In the end, though, there's little doubt that good will prevail and love will win the day. If only life were as chipper and magical.
see it: The Magic Flute is at the Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 7:30 pm Friday, May 6; 2 pm Sunday, May 8; and 7:30 pm Thursday, May 12, and Saturday, May 14. $28-$250.
Willamette Week