The Glenn Gould School gave the first of two performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at Koerner Hall on Wednesday evening.  The production is directed by Allison Grant and is pretty straightforward, though quite heavily cut.  The “look” is maybe Miyazaki animation (costumes by Alex Amini) with a minimalist backdrop (Kim Sue Bartnik) which is enlivened by interesting projections by Nathan Bruce and quite striking lighting by Jason Hand.  There’s a sort of dumb show during the overture that the Director’s Notes imply is something to do with the opera being about a dysfunctional family (what opera family isn’t?) but the idea isn’t developed at all.

The cuts largely make sense as this piece definitely has its tedious bits.  Much of Monostatos’ role is eliminated which makes things a bit less creepy.  Tamino’s attempt to get into the temple is gone and the Papageno “suicide” scene and the Trials are drastically shortened.  There are probably other, less obvious, snips. Bottom line, it comes in around two and a half hours instead of three or so.

The performances are generally rather good.  One doesn’t necessarily expect a Sarastro with real gravitas in a student production but Matthew Li provided it along with some properly sepulchral low notes.  Olivia Morton was a sweet toned and winning Pamina with perhaps a little more vocal heft than one sometimes hears in -inas.  Elias Theocharidis was an interesting Tamino. He has all the notes and a pretty big voice for the role.  He’s a good actor too.  So, it’s a very acceptable Tamino; just not the one one perhaps expects.  Maybe Tamino grows up to become Lohengrin?

McKenzie Warriner’s Königin started out a bit tentative and perhaps wasn’t helped by singing “O zittre nicht” from the choir loft.  She was on top form though for a pinpoint “Der Hölle Rache” which is, basically, the acid test.  Both Gennady Grebenchuk’s Papageno and Julia Kennific’s Papagena were in the proper spirit with the emphasis on comedy and acting and not-too-operatic singing.  Jeffrey Liu’s Monastatos (complete with Tim the Enchanter’s hat) was, appropriately, in a similar vein.

The Three Ladies; Emma Pennell, Charlotte Anderson and Jessica Lyublinsky, were good; though the absence of any hint of a dragon or equivalent did make their biggest scene a bit odd.  The Three Spirits were sung by female sopranos (Nora-Jane Montana, Meghan Linnington and Marie Conceiçāo) rather than the usual boys.  It’s an interesting idea.  It allowed them to show off a certain sexiness that would have been a little disturbing otherwise.  The assorted guards, priests and so on were all fine and doubled up as the chorus, animals etc.

Jennifer Tung conducted and had the orchestra in fine form.  Pit/stage cohesion and tempi were both for the most part just fine though the overture had me a bit worried.  It was taken. a good deal slower than is typical nowadays and I did wonder whether we were in for a Klemperian Flute.  We weren’t!

 All in all, it’s a pretty satisfying, well performed, though not especially innovative Die Zauberflöte.  There’s one more chance to see it on Friday evening.

Photo credits: Michael Cooper