Die Zauberflöte: fire and ice
One of 2016’s biggest opera premieres at the Mikhailovsky Theatre will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. The production by the German theatrical designer and director Pet Halmen will be brought to the Mikhailovsky by Eric Vigié, Director of the Opéra de Lausanne, where it was first performed in 2010.
“Some directors stage Die Zauberflöte exclusively for profound intellectuals,” says Vigié. "Audiences often find productions like that boring — some people cannot even sit through an hour of them. Then there are directors who turn the opera into a circus performance without good production or any hint of profundity. But if you do everything correctly and base it on the music, the opera turns out tragic and comic at the same time — there is room in it for both romance and introspection. It is a very subtle, sensitive work: its inner contradiction is what makes Mozart’s last opera so special.
"For over two centuries Die Zauberflöte has been giving audiences much cause for reflection and making them deeply engage on an intellectual level. Each new generation of theatregoers sees something new in the opera and draws its own conclusions. Students, people in their thirties, fifties and eighties all have different interpretations, often totally individual insights. And children who come to the opera have to catch their breath when they see the characters. It usually seems they don’t understand anything, but in fact they see it in their own way. That is what Die Zauberflöte is: an opera for all age groups, just as interesting to children as to enlightened intellectuals.
"The idea for this production was conceived by Pet Halmen in 2004 after a fire in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar. Most the books in the collection were destroyed. It was a great cultural shock for Germany. A huge part of the country’s cultural heritage was reduced to ashes. After such a nightmare you naturally try to restore the building, raise the walls and attempt to put the surviving items in order. The necessity of a cultural renaissance is one of the themes in Halmen’s production. I think for this reason it can be called a neoclassical production. Halmen attempts to restore the legacy of the past and uses its methods, but looks at it through the eyes of a modern director, relying on modern theatrical techniques.
“There are several profound scenes in Die Zauberflöte — the conversation between the Priest and Tamino, for example. This may be the most intellectually complex scene in the entire genre. It lasts only five minutes, but demands great mental exertion. Or the scene in act two with Tamino and Papageno, in which the former personifies high society, the aristocracy, while all the latter needs in life is a glass of wine and a plate of spaghetti. With all its apparent seriousness the production is full of fantasies that border on slight insanity. For example, Papageno appears dressed as a penguin. Why? First of all, penguins are lovable and amusing — everybody likes them. Secondly, Papageno says in scene one that he is poor and that is why he lives outside the library in the world at large — a world without culture which is full of ice and snow. And what can live in the snow and remain happy? A penguin!
“The libretto of Die Zauberflöte is tragic at times, while at other times appearing naive or even plain silly. But there is nothing surprising about that, as it was written many centuries ago. You probably know that the librettist Emanuel Schikaneder sang the part of Papageno at the premiere of the opera in 1791, though he was an ordinary actor with no vocal talent. In our production this historical fact is used to good effect by the character’s great mobility — he is constantly on the move. Opera singers are not usually so active on stage. There are a lot of stunts and other amusing parts to the action, but they do not divert attention from the main theme: the fragility of culture and its legacy.”
