The audience was enthusiastic on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, applauding the artists on stage with great generosity throughout the performance. On the applause meter, the success of The Magic Flute, Robert Carsen version, cannot be denied.
The show opens in a forest, where Prince Tamino, played by Pavol Breslik who has already played this role in the past, is attacked by a snake and loses consciousness. He is saved by the three ladies-in-waiting of the Queen of the Night, dressed all in black, who kill the reptile with pistols. Captivated by the prince’s beauty, they quarrel, each wanting to stay alone with him to let the others carry the news to the queen.
After their departure arrives the bird catcher Papageno, a bon vivant in search of his Papagena, who sees nothing wrong in monopolizing the feat of killing the snake. And to realize his mistake when the three ladies return who punish him. Seeing the portrait of Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night – a portrait that the public discovers in a video on a giant screen – the prince is seduced. And as in all tales, the prince immediately falls in love and must free the princess from the clutches of the evil Sarastro, and especially the servant Monostatos.
Armed with a magic flute and a magic chime, Prince Tamino and Papageno embark on the adventure. The story then takes another turn where appearances can be deceptive. Mozart’s last opera, composed and premiered in the year of his death in 1791, can be approached in several ways: story, philosophical journey, Masonic initiation ritual…
The work begins as a comedy and then penetrates into increasingly obscure areas. From light to darkness, from lightness to mysterious depths, from life to death, from death to life, the whole thing reserves many surprises. On stage, paintings with minimalist decorations follow one another.
Death, omnipresent, lurks. “When I re-studied the libretto, twenty years after having first staged it, I was struck by an aspect that had strangely escaped me at the time: the obsession with death. There are no less than sixty occurrences of this word in the text. remarks, in the libretto, the Canadian director. In the second act, the original narrative gives way to a new imagination. The evil Sarastro turns out to be another person. Mozart, a Freemason and in the twilight of his life, at the age of 35, shows an initiation ritual which questions life and death.
Jean Teitgen plays an enigmatic, deep Sarastro. He impresses with his vocal performance, but also his stage performance. Another endearing role: Papageno, played with mischief and relish by Mikhail Timoshenko. The Russian bass-baritone received a long standing ovation from the audience, particularly during the scene of his meeting with Papagena (Ilanah Lobel-Torres). The main character remains music. For her first time at the head of the Paris Opera Orchestra in a lyrical work, Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv offers effective and light direction. The Magic Flute, a work on several reading levels.
