Read Mark Stryker’s review of MOT’s “Magic Flute,” for FREEP
Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” is impossible not to love, but delivering a production of “The Magic Flute” that’s easy to love is altogether a different matter.
There are a lot contradictory impulses that have to be reconciled. The opera is at once a fantastic fairy tale, a lowbrow musical comedy and a highfalutin morality play steeped in the brotherhood-of-man ideals of freemasonry. As in all Mozart, the transparency of the score demands a delicate balance of precision and proportion. Elegance, intensity, humor, wisdom, wit, passion, restraint and charm are all required. Everybody knows it’s hard, but the trick is to make it all look as easy as Fred Astaire gliding across the dance floor.