Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Die Zauberflote
Opera national de Paris, 2001
Sarastro - Matti Salminen
Tamino - Piotr Beczala
Speaker - Wolfgang Schone
Queen of Night - Desiree Rancatore
Pamina - Dorothea Roschmann
First Lady - Cecile Perrin
Second Lady - Helene Schneiderman
Third Lady - Helene Perraguin
Papageno - Detlef Roth
Papagena - Gaele Le Roi
Monostatos - Uwe Peper
First priest - Bjarni Thor Kristinsson
Second Priest - Wilfried Gahmlich
First man in armour - Robert Kunzli
Second man in armour - Bjarni Thor Kristinsson
First Slave - Vadim Artamonov
Second Slave - Olivier Berg
Third Slave - Paolo Bondi
The three boys - Soloists of the Tolzer Knabenchor
L'Orchestre et Choeurs de l'Opera national de Paris
Ivan Fischer, conductor
Stage Director: Benno Besson
NTSC
Sound Formats: PCM-STEREO, DD 5.1
Picture Format: 16:9
Subtitles: GB, D, F, I, E
Region Code: 0
Running Time: 158 min
Mozart’s final opera Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) is also his most famous. The general public is familiar with its array of popular arias, most notably the Queen of the Night’s breathtaking coloratura. Since its premiere in 1791, two months before the composer’s death, the opera’s fairy tale plot, eccentric cast and fantastic scenery have exerted an almost childlike fascination on generations of audiences. The production, which TDK presents in their series of recordings from the Paris National Opera, is infused with an all-pervading sense of playful joy -packed with wonderful effects including flying machines, colourful costumes and magical scene changes.
Pamina, daughter of the Queen of Night, has been abducted and taken to the temple of the High Priest, Sarastro. Prince Tamino of Egypt is given the task of freeing the princess. He is joined on his journey by the merry bird catcher Papageno. Tamino finds Pamina, but in the course of his search, he becomes a follower of Sarastro, whose wisdom he learns to value. Tamino and Pamina fall in love, but before they can be united, they have to survive three trials in Sarastro’s realm. Magic instruments help them to overcome the attendant dangers. In the end Tamino heroically passes the mysterious initiation ordeal, and Papageno, too, is rewarded for his courage with a lover after his own heart.
More than any other opera, Die Zauberflote represents an unparalleled synthesis of different stylistic influences and models, all of which left their mark on the 18th-century Viennese theatre: it is at once a German Singspiel, an Italian opera seria demanding the greatest vocal virtuosity, an example of the improvisatory style of the commedia dell’arte tradition, a stage spectacle using elaborate machinery to create jaw-dropping special effects, and a philosophical parable. This fusion of popular elements with artistically demanding material has invariably been regarded as one of the keys to the secret of work’s impact.
The Paris production documented here opened at the end of 2000 and is cast of the finest rank: Sarastro is played by the experienced Finnish bass Matti Salminen, while the other main roles are taken by young singers - meanwhile all well-established on the international scene - who were then at the start of their careers: Pamina is sung by Dorothea Roschmann from Germany, while the Queen of Night is played by the Sicilian soprano Desiree Rancatore. The Polish tenor Piotr Beczala is Tamino, and the German baritone Detlef Roth is a fabulously fresh and lively Papageno. For this musical highlight, they come together under the baton of worldwide successful Hungarian conductor Ivan Fischer.
The Swiss director Benno Besson (1922-2006) studied with Bertolt Brecht in East Berlin and became the director of the city’s Volksbuhne, where he was instrumental in furthering the careers of writers and directors such as Heiner Muller. Besson was an out-and-out European humanist. For more than twenty years he worked closely with the Swiss designer Jean-Marc Strehle, and between them they held European theatre audiences in thrall with productions of childlike innocence, an aesthetic approach tailor-made for Die Zauberflote.
Besson’s detailed, even scholarly knowledge of the work’s genesis and his supreme grasp of its cultural and ideological background are placed entirely in the service of its fairytale aesthetic offering the viewer a truly magic opera!
( TDK )
