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'Magic' at the Met

Julie Taymor's staging of The Magic Flute bears many of her Broadway signatures (yes, there are puppets), but lets Mozart be Mozart.

By JOHN FLEMING
Published April 3, 2005

	[Metropolitan Opera]
	The tenor Matthew Polenzani, with a bear puppet, as Tamino in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

NEW YORK - During the first act of The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, the person sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, "This'll sell out for years!"

At that point, the Three Spirits, portrayed by angelic boys with wispy white beards, were flying slowly across the darkened stage, perched on a platform hanging from the wings of an enormous dove. Already, Mozart's venerable singspiel had sported a series of eye-popping effects, including vibrant bird puppets, a towering Queen of the Night with speckled, silvery butterfly wings manipulated by dancers, and the billowing, sinuous monster that pursued Tamino in the opening scene. There were more marvels to come.

Julie Taymor, director of The Lion King, had arrived at the Met, with her hotly anticipated staging of The Magic Flute, which premiered in October, James Levine conducting. Many of the strikingly theatrical elements familiar from Taymor's Broadway sensation - notably the puppets she codesigned with Michael Curry - were there and made a powerful impact in the opera, but Mozart still came through with flying colors.

For all its ingenuity, the production for the most part served to complement the magical score rather than overwhelm it. After the opera was over, it was the singing and orchestra playing that stayed with me.

And I felt less worn out than usual. Mozart's last and most complicated opera, which clocks in at more than three hours with intermission, is notorious for bogging down in the ritualistic second act. Taymor couldn't do much about that, but her visual dazzlement did manage to keep the exhaustion at bay for a while.

The Magic Flute returns to the Met this month for five performances, with a somewhat different cast than in the fall, though tenor Matthew Polenzani reprises his role as Tamino. It will be broadcast live at 1:30 p.m. April 16 on WUSF-FM 89.7, with Taymor featured in a discussion at intermission.

True to my seatmate's prediction, the performances are virtually sold out. The production will return in the 2005-06 season.

Taymor became a celebrity with The Lion King, which has music by Elton John and is still going strong after eight years, but her direction of opera predates her work on Broadway. Her first opera staging, in 1992, was of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex with Jessye Norman. In 1993, she directed The Magic Flute in Florence, Italy, a production that was the basis for her Met version. In 1995, she directed Salome for the Kirov Opera and The Flying Dutchman for Los Angeles Opera.

Russian set designer George Tsypin collaborated with Taymor in both the Florence and Met productions of The Magic Flute. At the center of his abstract design is a mammoth revolving plexiglass structure whose geometric shapes - a triangle, circle and squares - take on various forms throughout the performance, mirroring the labyrinthine libretto laden with symbolism ranging from ancient Egypt to the Masons to The Tempest.

"I became obsessed with the image of the triangular kaleidoscope as a perfect pyramidic vehicle to house both the exterior and inner landscapes of The Magic Flute," Taymor wrote in a program note.

Taymor tends to be impatient when the connection is drawn between The Lion King and her staging of opera, because many people get it backward. She first used bird kites in her operas before landing them on Broadway. Her use of masks on top of singers' heads goes back at least to Oedipus Rex.

There has been a fascinating progression of Taymor's evocative stage imagery. A cartoon is turned into an acclaimed Broadway musical, which owes a stylistic debt to her opera experience. Mozart is cross-fertilized with Disney, and the influence spreads through the cultural food chain all the way to theme parks. Puppet designer Curry and lighting designer Donald Holder, both part of The Lion King and The Magic Flute creative teams, lent their talents to the Busch Gardens minimusical Katonga.

Taymor has more opera in the future, designing and directing a production adapted from John Gardner's novel Grendel, with a score by her partner, Elliot Goldenthal, that premieres in spring 2006 at Los Angeles Opera. Also on her agenda is a Spider-Man musical for Broadway.

The performance of The Magic Flute that I attended was superbly sung, highlighted by Polenzani's ardent Tamino and L'ubica Vargicova's high-flying Queen of the Night, and the orchestra was splendid. Inevitably, the cast seemed a bit dwarfed by the remarkable stagecraft, but this production is going to be popular for years to come, and it will be interesting to see how it settles in over the long haul.

[Last modified March 31, 2005, 09:42:04]