Free The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera by Rupert Christiansen Page B

its quality of simplicity which is most striking (compare the sophistication of Così fan tutte or the grandeur of La Clemenza di Tito, both of them close in date of composition).This can partly be explained by the fact that Zauberflöte was written for a theatre, not an opera house, and Mozart tailored the music to the modest vocal abilities of some of the original cast – Schikaneder, who played Papageno, was an actor by profession rather than a singer, hence the musical simplicity of the role; Pamina was the seventeen-year-old Anna Gottlieb, who had also sung Barbarina in the first performance of Le Nozze di Figaro. It is also worth noting that the tenor who sang Tamino was an accomplished flute player (nowadays his music is usually played from the pit, where Papageno’s magic bells are also rendered by a glockenspiel).
    Pamina’s Act II aria, ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’, is a test of both singer and conductor, inasmuch as its very slow tempo can easily drag beyond the point at which the soprano can maintain sufficient breath to phrase it.The role of the Queen of the Night, with its dazzling coloratura and celebrated top Fs, is strongly contrasted with that of her antagonist Sarastro, whose calmly authoritative and godlike arias feature low Fs.Not all the music is of the highest quality, and there are miscalculations, particularly towards the end of the opera, where there’s too much of Papageno, the music for flute, brass and timpani which accompanies Tamino and Pamina’s final ordeal scarcely suggests anything very terrifying, and the closing chorus seems like a perfunctory full stop rather than a genuineclimax.But this is a bran-tub of an opera, with something for everyone, generous in its spirit and irresistible in its charm.
    In performance
    For all its fun and innocence, Die Zauberflöte is not easy to stage convincingly.As a Singspiel, it contains long stretches of spoken dialogue, something which opera singers are not generally accomplished at delivering.Some productions cut this element drastically; others have attempted to liven it up with racily idiomatic modern translation and opportunities for Papageno to ad lib.But balancing the pantomime gags with the sublime seriousness of Sarastro’s temple and Tamino’s quest for truth is tricky.One version which managed to generate both childlike wonder and dramatic tension is Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 film‚ which begins in a theatre full of attentive children but gradually moves out into darker, more adult territory.Staged productions which have succeeded more conventionally include Nicholas Hytner’s at ENO and John Cox’s, designed by David Hockney, and seen at Glyndebourne and the Met.
    Several directors, notably Peter Sellars in his controversial Glyndebourne production (set on and under a Los Angeles freeway), have presented Sarastro as a figure every bit as sinister as the Queen of the Night, implying that his devotees are a zombie-like cadre of people mesmerized by his tyranny, rather than the votaries of a new order of Wisdom, Reason and Nature.The parallel with modern religious sects such as the Moonies is obvious – perhaps excessively so.
    Recordings
    CD: Ruth Ziesak (Pamina); Georg Solti (cond.).Decca 433 210 2
    Rosa Mannion (Pamina); William Christie (cond.).Erato 0630 12705 2.Period instruments
    Video: Lucia Popp (Pamina); Karl Böhm (cond.).Bavarian State Opera production.Philips 0704053

German opera in the early nineteenth century struggled to liberate itself from the domination of sternly regulated royal or ducal theatres and a preference for the proprieties of Italian opera seria. As part of the revolution in the arts known as Romanticism, composers reached for a freer, more demotic range of subject-matter, drawn from the history and legends of the German peoples rather than regal personages and classical mythology.The crucial work of this period was Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821), an opera embodying the fascination with