A sound engineer making deafening sounds on stage with wads of paper. Puppetry that flows seamlessly into film projections and singers dubbed by actors. A primitive stage on stage that is, however, high tech. A performance in one of the largest halls in our country, but reminiscent of a flat-floor performance. A flat floor that can move in all directions, though, and could just as easily be a slope or a ceiling, that is.
Behold the ingredients for Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in the hands of director Simon McBurney and his regular team of collaborators. Two years ago, they already impressed with A dog's life and their The Master and Margarita was one of the highlights of the last Holland Festival, but now they are reinventing a deadbeat opera: rarely have they seen such an energetic 'Magic Flute'.
And that's clever, because Die Zauberflöte is one of the most played operas but rarely convinces. And this is not just down to the many companies that stage the opera every year, because let's not be difficult about it: Mozart's last opera is a curious mishmash of Masonic rite and fairy tale storytelling that is far from always convincing as musical theatre.At the Muziektheater, however, the momentum is there right away: the opera begins as soon as conductor Marc Albrecht is in place. With the hall lights on and the applause not yet hushed, the famous first three chords (although there are five, of course) sound. In the three hours that follow, McBurney performs the impossible. What Michel van der Aa did in After life did with film in opera, he does for sound and theatrical tricks: precisely by playfully making all the theatrical tricks visible, he creates a completely believable performance that does not leave the spectator untouched for a moment.
McBurney thus captures the essence of Die Zauberflöte flawlessly exposed. The opera is a problematic play with doubles, not only in the story, but especially in the practical execution. For instance, Mozart prescribes that both Tamino and Papageno not only sing, but also play music - the magic flute and the glockenspiel. This produces contrived situations in many staging, in which the singer contortedly pretends to play while the sound comes from the orchestra pit.
If not here.
When Tamino, beautifully sung by Maximilian Schmidt, plays his magic flute, he first delivers it neatly into the orchestra pit. Papageno also emphatically slides his glockenspiel in that direction. I am here to sing and act, music you do.
And it works.
Because if the best theatre, like the best novels, is all about 'the suspension of disbelief', then the very act of pretending while everyone in the room sees and hears that the action is out of sync with the sound arouses more disbelief than simply showing the theatrical illusion. So back to basics. You see how it happens, and yet you immediately believe it, precisely because you see the mechanism behind it.
Pierre Audi, artistic director of De Nederlandse Opera, also showed bare stage technology in his staging of Handel operas. He did so in the very theatre of Drottningholm, rediscovered in 1921 - the only baroque theatre with original stage technology in the world. He broke through the theatrical illusion and made the eighteenth-century mechanics behind it visible.
Pierre Audi also directed the last Die Zauberflöte in Amsterdam with sets and costumes by Karel Appel. A visually overwhelming production with brightly painted cars, bright yellow birds and three little boys singing to Tamino from an aeroplane high above the stage floor.
As colourful as that show was, this one seems bare. But appearances are deceptive. 'Debunking' an opera by simplifying the libretto often results in tedious performances, but McBurney does not do that. On the contrary, he takes the text very seriously and exposes the motivations of the main characters. He turns the three little boys into three old men, the queen of the night is literally powerless in her wheelchair and Sarastro addresses the audience directly. Even fun-loving Papageno gains depth, as McBurney allows him to react to the absurdity of the situation as much as possible and join in the game with the audience. Thomas Oliemans thus grows into the star of the performance. Wonderful is his look when at the end of the opera, out of nowhere, he seemingly effortlessly plays the glockenspiel himself.
Who is fooling who?
De Nederlandse Opera: W.A. Mozart - Die Zauberflöte. Muziektheater, Amsterdam, still showing until 30 December.
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