A tasteless, pointless, gimmicky mishmash
Should you believe that the message of Die Zauberflöte can be reduced to the philosophy of Masterchef, then here is a show for you. Everyone else would be advised to steer clear. Since its first productions in the 1790s, this allegorical pantomime of an opera has invited all manner of imaginative recreation: in recent years, for example, I’ve seen Julie Taymor’s Lion King approach at the Met, a staging in the Bois de Boulogne that used real animals for Sarastro’s menagerie, and Barrie Kosky’s brilliant use of CGI and video, as well as the more classical approach
taken by Nicholas Hytner. All these versions have offered pleasure and even enlightenment, and the liberal spirits of Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder must be applauding them all. But they would surely be aghast at the meaningless, tasteless, pointless, gimmicky mishmash that the director-designer partnership of André Barbe and Renaud Doucet have presented at Glyndebourne, presumably at great expense and investment of time.
Their concept draws on the history of the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, managed during the last decades of the Austrohungarian Empire by the formidable Anna Sacher, who kept the recipe for its eponymous chocolate torte a closely guarded secret.
On this flimsy basis, Barbe & Doucet equate Sacher with the Queen of the Night and make Tamino a stray hotel guest, Papageno a bumptious checksuited travelling salesman and Sarastro a reformist chef in competition with Sacher. The trials preceding entry into the Masonic brotherhood consist of Pamina preparing a lobster thermidor and Tamino washing up a Homeric pile of dirty dishes.
It may be passingly cute, but it’s not funny or well paced – Papageno’s antics are more than usually interminable – and it crucially lacks even a vestige of dramatic logic. The picture is further muddled by making Queen of the Night and her crew suffragettes, and the obtrusion at random intervals of tiresome marionettes, their manipulation less than expert.
There is plenty of eye-candy: in homage to Hockney’s cross-hatched sets for The Rake’s Progress (and perhaps influenced by the graphic style of Edward Gorey), Barbe has dreamed up an impressive series of black-andwhite inked drop-cloths in flattened perspective, taking us from hotel foyer to boiler-room, where Monostatos the stoker molests Pamina, and kitchen, where Sarastro presides over the pots and pans. Each tableau is attractive, but any deeper moral message has been eradicated – the priest who guards the doors to truth and wisdom is here just a sceptical sous-chef with keys to the pantry.
All this might have mattered less if the musical performance had been more distinguished. Alas, it’s workaday: although Ryan Wigglesworth conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with sufficient clarity and attack, it felt soulless and joyless.
Sofia Fomina lacked charm and innocence as Pamina, her account of “Ach ich fühl’s” tremulous and bumpy; her Tamino, David Portillo, was only decent without ardour or youth. Caroline Wettergreen interpolated a hideous stratospheric shriek into the climax of “O zittre nicht” and sagged in pitch during “Der Hölle Rache”; poor Björn Bürger as Papageno was left adrift by the deadly production.
The most dignified singing came from Brindley Sherratt (Sarastro), Jörg Schneider (Monostatos), Michael Kraus (Speaker) and the Queen of the Night’s well-blended trio of attendant ladies.
Glyndebourne must have hoped to cook up a delicious treat of a box office winner. All it’s got is egg on its face. In rep until Aug 24. Tickets: 01273 815000; glyndebourne.com