Die Zauberflöte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (review)

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• Die Zauberflöte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Joseph A. Heissan Jr.

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE. By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. Directed and choreographed by Simon McBurney. Metropolitan Opera House, New York. May 25, 2023.

In Mozart’s singspiel Die Zauberflöte, the characters struggle to distinguish truth from lies. Chock-full of conjurings, transformations, mysterious trials, and magical instruments, the heavily allegorical libretto provides many opportunities for elaborate onstage illusions. While this contemporary-dress production at the Met certainly delighted the eyes and ears with inspiring theatrical artifice, what distinguished the staging by Simon McBurney (co-founder of Complicité) was the decision to place the artists creating those effects in clear view of the audience. Exposing the artists’ activities paradoxically exemplified the Enlightenment ideals of truth, honesty, and integrity woven into the libretto while also championing the power of the imagination in live performance-making.

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Thomas Oliemans (Papageno) and Ruth Sullivan (Foley artist) in Die Zauberflöte. (Photo: Karen Almond/Met Opera.)

From the moment I entered the auditorium in search of my seat, I noticed the creative team had worked to reinforce our collective awareness of being in the Metropolitan Opera House awaiting the performance. The open stage curtain revealed the upstage cyclorama and exposed wings. The minimal scenery consisted of a centerstage platform with four corner cables, each connected to tower-like scaffolding that formed two proscenium arches over the platform, thus creating a smaller onstage stage. (When repositioned during the performance, this platform was transformed imaginatively into various objects and locales.) In the orchestra pit, raised flooring made the musicians visible. After finishing their last-minute preparations, the actors, [End Page 226] who would serve as performer-puppeteers, took seats in chairs out on the apron, stage left and stage right, near the Met’s proscenium arch. Even farther left and right on the apron, workbenches displayed various materials and equipment. When the overture began, visual artist Blake Habermann and Foley artist Ruth Sullivan entered and walked onto the down-center apron to observe the audience. They exchanged glances confirming all was ready to begin. Habermann then crossed to one workbench and Sullivan to the other. From the beginning, this production called attention to the presence of these artists, whose labor—like that of most theatrical designers—might well have been left invisible.

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Seth Morris (Flute Soloist), Lawrence Brownlee (Tamino), and the ensemble in Die Zauberflöte. (Photo: Karen Almond/Met Opera.)

The illusions Habermann and Sullivan produced during the performance, through projections and sound effects, respectively, proved especially engaging because we could view their creation in real time. In addition to Habermann using a chalkboard to generate a series of text and line-drawing projections—mountains, whirlpools, atmospheric changes, godlike commentaries, manifestations of characters’ emotions—he also employed shadow-puppetry to evoke appearances by Papageno (Thomas Oliemans) and the Three Boys (Deven Agge, Julian Knopf, and Luka Zylik) as well as physical objects like books to conjure Sarastro’s temple. Similarly, Sullivan utilized everyday items—bottles, shoes, sheet metal, an umbrella, rocks, a bucket—to produce various sound illusions. The impact of this multisensory trompe l’œil (and l’oreille) was enhanced whenever characters not only acknowledged the presence of these artists but also conspired with them to create onstage illusions. Allowing us to discover how these two artists engaged our imaginations made their illusions oddly more impactful.

The actors tasked with conjuring the birds that repeatedly flocked around Papageno employed a style of puppetry that made no attempt to conceal their own existence as puppeteers from the audience. For the birds’ initial appearance, eight of these actors and every member of the orchestra grabbed half-folded pieces of sheet music that resembled bird wings. Everyone then raised and lowered their hands as a group—much like fans doing the wave in a soccer stadium—which conjured a huge flock of birds rippling across the pit. The actors then made their birds swoop over toward Papageno to flit about him. Given the imaginative energy the audience invested in the birds whenever they appeared, it was no surprise that...