Jamie Manton’s production of The Magic Flute for the Royal Academy of Music takes its cue from Tamino’s predicament at the opera’s opening – wounded and in mortal danger. Accordingly, he is found on a hospital bed, in an unconscious swoon (the cause of his injuries here not disclosed) and it appears that what follows may be a delirious dream about the challenges he may have to confront between life and death. But it is only at the end that his partner, Pamina, is seen standing at his bedside while he remains unconscious, and three girls sit reading, seemingly implying that what has occurred may, instead, be a metatheatrical fantasy on the part of one or the other characters amidst the dreary monotony of the clinic (perhaps in the mind of the anxious Pamina, or the frisky cleaners or porters Papageno and Papagena).
The perspective on the drama isn’t quite clear therefore, but the battle over the means to Tamino’s recovery is between the good and evil provision of medical attention by Sarastro and the Queen of the Night – the former a diligent surgeon, the latter clad in a black latex dress, assisted by three sassy, vampiric nurses, who extract the young Tamino’s blood and inject themselves with it as an elixir of life. With the Armed Men as curiously headless besuited advisors, and Fionn Ó hAlmhain’s hollow-sounding Speaker in a black cowl, carrying an hourglass like Father Time, the result is a sort of gothic comedy, like a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Only When I Laugh. Certainly it’s the opera’s pantomime or burlesque elements which are to the fore here, rather than its Enlightenment ethic (with spoken dialogue cut back to the minimum).
If there is a moral, it’s seen during the trials by fire and water, when the Queen of the Night and Sarastro each perform an operation in turn – one a devious act of black magic, the other a clinically correct procedure, seemingly representing the triumph of empirical science (and cause for hope that Tamino will pull through). That at least preserves the basic tenet of the original scenario whose Enlightenment assumptions have otherwise somewhat come under attack in recent times among some circles (just at the point in our ‘post-truth’, AI-infested, conspiracy-driven, Trumpian age when it seems that we need such values more than ever) even if those principles are not further explored here. But the rest of the entertainment does at least prevent this interpretation of the opera from becoming a banal moral tale.
It serves as the vehicle for the RAM singers to have fun along the way, underpinned by a generally hasty account of the score by Olivia Clarke with the RAM Chorus and Sinfonia. In a couple of occasions the singers don’t quite keep up, but otherwise it underlies the production’s essentially jovial vein. Konstantinos Akritides’s Tamino and Caroline Blair’s Pamina somewhat stand to one side of that in their earnest, serious performances – he projecting a bold tone of voice (there could be more inwardness in ‘Dies Bildnis’) and she exuding an exacting, gentle musical personality. Abigail Sinclair combines impressive incisiveness in her delivery of the Queen of the Night’s coloratura with commanding flair.
After some insecure intonation on his first appearance, Mikayel Sargsyan attains a more efficient confidence in his Act Two numbers, though he could cultivate more of a charismatic presence on stage. Alex Bower-Brown is beset by no such problem as Papageno, who brings levity and solid singing to the part without overacting it. He is supported by Maya Sayag’s playful Papagena, just as the Three Ladies and Three Boys all receive lively and dependable realisations here, even if the rationale for the latter as mischievous schoolboys with dunces’ hats in a hospital is obscure. Musical alacrity overall makes up for any incoherence in the production.
Curtis Rogers
Die Zauberflöte
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto: Emanuel Schikaneder
Cast and production staff:
Tamino – Konstantinos Akritides; Papageno – Alex Bower-Brown; Pamina – Caroline Blair; Queen of the Night – Abigail Sinclair; Sarastro – Mikayel Sargsyan; Three Ladies – Sophie Benfield, Ella Orehek-Coddington & Clover Kayne; Monostatos / Priest / First Armed Man – Matthew Stillo-Cooke; Speaker / Second Armed Man – Fionn Ó hAlmhain; Priest – Tom Butler; Papagena – Maya Sayag; Three Boys – Hailey West, Anna Luna & Núria Prats Illanas
Director – Jamie Manton; Movement Director – Corina Würsch; Designer – Justin Nardella; Lighting Designer – Charlie Morgan Jones; Conductor – Olivia Clarke, Royal Academy Opera Chorus and Sinfonia
Royal Academy of Music, London, UK, 19 March 2025
Top image: Cast of Die Zauberflöte
All photos by Craig Fuller