Gale Edwards' production of The Magic Flute (Victoria State Opera)

The Magic Flute. Directed by Gale Edwards. Designed by Roger Kirk. Lighting design by Jamieson Lewis. Victoria State Opera. State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre. November 18 to December 7, 1991.

When The Magic Flute was performed in Melbourne during the 1956 Olympics, a guest soprano from Yugoslavia sang the role of Pamina. What distinguished Sena Jurinac's performance from those of her Australian comrades was language. While Geoffrey Chard et al. sang in English, Jurinac used Italian! (Schikaneder's libretto was, of course, written in German.)

I mention this bizarre episode in our operatic history not because Chard is in the current Victoria State Opera production, but because his vocal clarity is scarce to a point where extinction seems inevitable. Several principal singers in the first cast of the VSO's Flute were virtually unintelligible.

One could be mistaken for assuming that English was Gregory Tomlinson's second language; he sang it, on opening night, like Jose Carreras. His Tamino was marred by flaccid enunciation, unnatural inflection and a disagreeable nasal characteristic. He made all the right noises but packaged them poorly.

Christine Douglas' serene light-soprano is well suited to the role of Pamina, but in her aria Ach ich fühl's es ist verschwunden [sorry, I don't know it in English] I didn't catch more than half-a-dozen words. Her singing was lustrous and exquisite - but the words were quite incomprehensible.

Those who could be understood were relegated to minor roles. Mark Pedrotti, as Papageno, was the exception. While he might've lacked the charm of a Fulford or a Hagegård, he sang with beauty and strength. Linda Thompson and Roxane Hislop - two stars in the making - also impressed. Their singing was glorious... and uncommonly lucid.

While the overall inadequacy of articulation is annoying, it does not prevent one from enjoying Gale Edwards' scintillating production. Her Flute is a modern panto that eschews the Masonic intrigue in favour of a breezy and exuberant theatricality.

Göran Järvefelt's Flute, for The Australian Opera, was always going to be an extremely hard act to follow. Edwards, sensibly, given that the AO production has been mounted here twice in the last six years, takes a quite different line through the opera. Ignoring all that is extraneous to the libretto, Edwards presents The Magic Flute as an adult fairy tale.

This journey from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment, begins and ends in the penthouse of the "wealthy and spoilt" Tamino. Having partied while his girlfriend is away, Tamino is caught in flagrante with a "classy tart", as the mute role is identified in the programme. The action of the opera is thus rendered as the hallucinations of an inebriated prince.

Okay, it's tabloid opera, but that is exactly what Mozart was commissioned to write. His librettist Schikaneder, a successful actor-manager, solicited Mozart to compose a magic opera set in exotic locales allowing the use of spectacle and vernacular comedy. In that sense, Edwards' production is true to the spirit of the original work; it certainly has a precocious appeal.

Musically, the production requires some tuning. The off-stage chorus is muffled and barely audible. Stephen Barlow's commendable musical direction has one or two odd lapses. The Act One finale, for example, is inappropriately bouncy. Still, I have not heard the State Orchestra play so well on an opening night.

At a handful of performances, substitutions will be made in six principal roles and in the pit. Audiences who catch the second cast will have no cause to feel aggrieved. It is, if anything, marginally better - it is certainly superior theatrically. Roger Lemke is a splendid Papageno. Geoffrey Harris (Tamino) and Helen Adams (Pamina) are vivid and precise. Michael Terry's attractive tenor is somewhat soft for the role of Monastatos, but it is a delight to see him performing a key role.

It is worth considering just how far this company has come since it mounted Anthony Besch's dreary production of The Flute in 1984. That production, in the company's first year in the State Theatre, used sets and costumes borrowed from the Australian and English National opera companies. Roger Kirk's elegant new designs should grace this stage, and others, for many years to come. Indeed, this production of The Magic Flute will be part of the State Opera of South Australia's 1992 season.


A shortened version of this review was published in the Australian Financial Review on November 29, 1991.