by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Directed by Marshall Pynkoski
An Opera Atelier Production
at the Elgin Theatre
November 17-19, 21-22, 24-26, 2006

   Marshall Pynkoski keeps Opera Atelier’s diehard fans in bliss by adhering to all the old-fashioned, colourful theatrical conventions of baroque operetta, and in the case of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, this bliss is compounded by the fairy tale component that Pynkoski’s production often parodies with camp. The Magic Flute is itself a parody, with its enchanted landscape (beautifully designed by Gerard Gauci in the trompe l’oeil mode), its airy but warmly emotional music (beautifully orchestrated and performed by Tafelmusik under David Fallis’ baton), its simplistic characters and plotting culminating in the conquest of death by love, even though that love is often broadly poked fun of in the libretto. Pynkoski’s production gives us billowing clouds, three boy cherubims nestled in a boat floating on high, thunder sheets, a dragon that is cartoon funny, a Monostatos (chief slave of Sarastro) that is straight out of a B-movie farce, and a Papageno who is an entertaining romantic fool. Mozart’s gentle mockery of romantic love is compounded in Dora Rust-D’Eye’s plush costumes, where the women (particularly the three lady attendants of the Queen of the Night) have low-cut bodices to show off their ample bosoms as they compete for audience approval. The score, of course, is a different matter, its melodic line allowing for arias where men and women yearn for one another.

   Trouble is that this operetta has a dichotomy. One half of it is simple comic fun; the other half is more serious. The challenge is getting a production to join the two halves in a satisfying whole. The Opera Atelier production is weighted more heavily on the comic side—but even here, there is a problem, for much of the acting is amateurish or awkward. As for the other half, the Masonic symbolism and philosophy aren’t really well integrated or realized in performance, perhaps because the design concept seems to have borrowed more from India than from any mystic brotherhood that Mozart may have had in mind.

   The singing, however, is what audiences will cherish. Colin Ainsworth makes a handsome Prince Tamino to Peggy Kriha Dye's less charismatic but nonetheless effective Pamina, and his ringing tenor serves the character’s heart of gold disposition well. The lady attendants of Jennie Such, Vilma Indra Vitols, and Laura Pudwell are beautifully contrasted vocally and temperamentally, though their sense of comedy is not as sharp. Gerald Isaac is a comic devil of a Monostatos, and so it is hard to take him seriously, and as his master, Curtis Sullivan sings strongly, even though he looks and acts as if he belonged to Kismet. Penelope Randall-Davis is a thrilling Queen of the Night who earns the loudest applause for her tones, but the acting honours go to Olivier Laquerre’s Papageno who is handsome, buffoonish without being tiresome, though a touch camp in his eager carnality and lack of moral scruple.  

Photo credits: Bruce Zinger
image 1: Colin Ainsworth, Olivier Laquerre, Jennie Such,
                 Laura Pudwell and Vilma Vitols

image 2: Olivier Laquerre and Peggy Kriha Dye