About a year ago, I saw the famous opera “Die Zauberflöte” of Mozart for the first time. It was a filmed performance shown in a cinema. Later I bought the complete piece on cd and because an opera has a big visual part, I also got it on dvd. The local theatre had a Zauberflöte last Saturday and we decided to see it for real too. The anouncement and information on the internet said that the “Nationale Reisopera” (”national traveling opera”) had a special way of playing it, and they sure had!
Before the opera started, there was an awfull introduction. A man stating that initiation in ancient times is what we now call “psycho therapy”, that the rites in “Die Zauberflöte” are rites de passage and that Freemasonry since Mozart also accepts women…
Fortunately the piece itself was a lot better. The people who have worked on the opera had quite a focus on the Masonic and especially on the alchemical symbolism of Mozart’s piece and there was no cutting in the tests and rites.
The ’speciality’ of this performance was that the singers/actors had to do their thing on an almost empty stage and there were serveral puppet theatres where the story was also shown with puppets. These theatres were filmed and projected on a big screen. The opera was sung in German, but subtitles in Dutch were also given. The puppet theatres sometimes added to what you could see from the actors, sometimes it was the other way around. The puppets also added a lot of humour to the part. One extra special thing was that one show has one Papageno made of two ‘half’ Papageno’s, since one actors couldn’t walk (so he stood singing on the side of the stage) and the other not sing (vocal cord injury).
All in all “Die Zauberflöte” remained a masterly opera and the performance was very nice as well. I noticed that it was the last performance of the travelling opera’s tour, so there is no change that you can go yourself. You will have to do it with photos then…