“If there is a show that will serve to start at the opera at any age, it is certainly this”. What is claimed by the soprano Ruth Rosique, who plays the role of Papagena in one of the operatic productions most successful of the past few years, The magic flute was first performed by the Comic Opera of Berlin in 2012, inspired by the aesthetic of the silent movies of the 20’s. Represented in various countries since then, was presented already in the Teatro Real of Madrid and can be seen again in this same scenario, starting on Sunday.
Directed by Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky, one of the keys to the success of this production lies in the use of aesthetic referents current and tremendously entertaining: the world of silent movies, animation, pop art, comics. “Exactly the same thing as did Mozart in his time. Both he and Schikaneder [librettist] were great pranksters and composed this piece thinking of all kinds of public, almost as a way of bringing the opera to layers more popular,” he explained this morning, Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the Teatro Real, in the presentation of the show. Tamino is here a kind of Rudolph Valentino, Pamina reminiscent of the magnetic Liza Minelli Cabaret, Papageno could be Buster Keaton, Monostatos refers to the very Nosferatu and the Queen of the Night is a spider that could have been sculpted by Louise Bourgeois.
But the most striking thing about this magic Flute, which has fascinated of truth to anyone who has seen it, is its scenery. Or rather, its lack of scenery. Everything happens in a kind of movie screen giant of the emerging singers (many times bound by the harnesses) in their respective scenes. There are No chairs or tables or anything material, they are all projections that enhance the fantastic of the original work, with which they continually interact with the singers. It is as if the cartoons materialize and come out of the screen. In the spoken parts-the piece belongs to the genre of the singspiel, which mixes spoken text and sung─, the dialogues are summarized in posters like the ones that are inserted in the films of silent cinema.
The idea came to Barrie Kosky watching a show from the theatre company a british 1927, founded in 2005 by the actress and playwright Suzanne Andrade and illustrator Paul Barritt, who quickly made a name for himself on the international stage for its personalísimos shows, fusing animation and film with actors of flesh bone. In Spain we have been able to see in the last few years two of his mounts more applauded, The Animals and Children Took to the Streets and Golem, two good examples of his original aesthetics.
In the pit will be the musical director of the Teatro Real, Ivor Bolton, a great expert in the works of Mozart and that also was when it was introduced in 2016. A double cast will alternate on the main characters: Andrea Mastroni and Rafal Siwek (Sarastro/Speaker), Stanislas de Barbeyrac and Paul Appleby (Tamino), Albina Shagimuratova, Aleksandra Olczyk and Rocío Pérez (the Queen of the Night), Anett Fritsch and Olga Peretyatko (Pamina), Ruth Rosique (Papagena), Andreas Wolf and Joan Martín-Royo (Papageno) and Mikeldi Atxalandabaso (Monostatos).
