The Magic Flute Programme
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Programme Notes September 4th, Market Place Theatre, Armagh September 6th, Strule Arts Centre, Omagh September 10th & 11th, Lyric Theatre, Belfast September 13th, Millennium Forum, Derry-Londonderry 1 Welcome to this evening’s performance Brendan Collins, Richard Shaffrey, Sinéad of The Magic Flute in association with O’Kelly, Sarah Richmond, Laura Murphy Nevill Holt Opera - our first ever Mozart and Lynsey Curtin - as well as an all-Irish production, and one of the most popular chorus. The showcasing and development operas ever written. of local talent is of paramount importance Open to the world since 1830 to us, and we are enormously grateful for The Magic Flute is the first production of the support of the Arts Council of Northern Austins Department Store, our 2014-15 season to be performed Ireland which allows us to continue this The Diamond, in Northern Ireland. As with previous important work. The well-publicised Derry / Londonderry, seasons we have tried to put together financial pressures on arts organisations in Northern Ireland an interesting mix of operas ranging Northern Ireland show no sign of abating BT48 6HR from the 18th century to the 21st, and however, and the importance of individual combining the very well known with the philanthropic support and corporate Tel: +44 (0)28 7126 1817 less frequently performed. Later this year sponsorship has never been greater. I our co-production (with Opera Theatre would encourage everyone who enjoys www.austinsstore.com Company) of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore seeing regular opera in Northern Ireland will tour the Republic of Ireland, following staged with flair and using the best local its successful tour of Northern Ireland operatic talent to consider supporting us last year. In February we will bring by either joining our new Friends scheme an exciting new production of Strauss’ or by investing in one of our sponsorship notorious opera Salome to Belfast’s Grand packages, details of which are in the Opera House, and we have also revived enclosed leaflet. our acclaimed production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw with performances in the We are delighted to welcome back to UK and Russia at different times throughout Northern Ireland Stephen Richardson the year. who sang the roles of Daland in The Flying Dutchman and, unforgettably, Lady All four of these productions are Bracknell in our production of Gerald celebrations not only of great opera Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest imaginatively staged, but also of the last year. We also extend a warm incredible depth of operatic talent here welcome to some wonderful international on the island of Ireland. The Turn of artists making their NI Opera debuts - the Screw and L’Elisir d’Amore are Anthony Gregory, Ruth Jenkins-Róbertsson, both designed by Omagh’s Annemarie and John Graham-Hall, whose recent Woods, and both feature young local engagements have taken him to the singers. The cast of Salome is led by Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Belfast-born Giselle Allen - undoubtably Royal Opera House Covent Garden and one of Northern Ireland’s finest and La Scala Milan, where he sang the title most successful Sopranos - whilst The role in Peter Grimes alongside Stephen Magic Flute boasts no fewer than eight Richardson. principals from Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic (including two past winners Enjoy the show! of the Festival of Voice, and three current and former members of our Young Artists’ Roy Bailie © Bernard Ward derryphotos.com Programme) - Aoife Miskelly, Ben McAteer, Chairman 2 3 Directors Note Mozart wrote The Magic Flute, his final Mozart, troubled by financial worries and precipitate decline in freemasonry’s (Papageno, Monostatos) have no place in opera, in 1791. A fantastical hybrid of ill-health, declining fashionability and political and moral significance since its it, except perhaps as servants. Similarly, the serious and the comic, whose generic waning patronage, masonry was also a heyday in the late eighteenth and early masonry’s ritual and symbols, secrecy and multiplicity is held together by Mozart’s way to belong, of mixing with some of nineteenth centuries, when some of the interrogations, its fetish for masculinity extraordinary music, Flute is also a the highest-born in society on theoretically great figures of the age (not least many of and order, appear less satisfactory from revealing reflection of its time and the equal terms. Mozart took his masonic the founders of the American state) were the perspective of the depredations of priorities of its composer. At one level responsibilities seriously, sticking with his masons. Perhaps this is because the values the twentieth century’s mass-scale sects a popular entertainment, a pantomime, local brotherhood when many others were which Mozart takes to be givens no longer in Germany, Russia and elsewhere. As The Magic Flute was also political (as leaving under pressure from the Austrian seem quite as progressive now as they a mason, however, Mozart regarded Orwell insisted all art is). Perhaps this is state, composing masonic pieces while were to him. male-dominated super-elites as something not such a surprise; the French Revolution the government of the time increasingly positive and necessary – even if to us they was a mere two years old, and the frowned on the masonic project in Consider the oft-remarked status of seem a rather more dubious product of the Austrian Queen of France – portrayed general, and saturating his new opera women in the opera. It is hardly fair to eighteenth century mind-set. by contemporary radicals in as luridly with esoteric references and numerology. judge Mozart by the standards of today, unsympathetic a light as Mozart’s Queen Because with all its humour, Flute has a but nevertheless the male chauvinism of Perhaps not just an eighteenth century of the Night - was about to be similarly message. Sarastro and his brotherhood is striking mind-set. Elites are resilient, and people cast into oblivion (in Marie Antoinette’s (and in this, a logical development from will always want to be members of the case, via decapitation). Enlightenment A central part of this message is, of Cosi Fan Tutte, whose casual and at times best clubs; and both elites and clubs often idealism was being tempered by the course, Mozart’s memorable celebrations vicious misogyny is reflected not only trade on an anti-progressive fondness for bloody realities of radicalism. Where did of love and music, themes which meant in its title). Women are excluded from old times and old ways. Nostalgia for the Mozart and his opera stand in all this? most to him as both man and artist. Sarastro’s brotherhood, and derided for past is very often a nostalgia for when Repeatedly, music is seen as unlocking their dupilicity and pride. Pamina becomes people knew their place, not least women One cannot escape the masonic allegory characters’ potential, reviving and an initiate, but for all her inner nobility, and servants – witness the contemporary of The Magic Flute, investigated in ennobling them, a solution to their it is made very clear that she is a highly appeal of Downton Abbey, even among exhaustive detail by Jacques Chailley problems and predicaments. And music unusual exception. Sarastro might espouse those parts of society who would have in The Magic Flute Unveiled. Doubtless is an extension of love, of sensibility, of enlightened and benevolent opinions, but been the most disenfranchised had they Mozart intended his opera to idealise the feeling – the capacity for which defines seen from the perspective of now, in some actually lived a hundred years ago. Masonic Brotherhood, as he understood Man’s ability to be human. This emphasis ways he seems rather unenlightened. He Mozart’s opera was prescient even in his it. In Mozart’s era, for all its archane surely gives us the work’s true and relies on force and violence to impose time. As with all great art, it is reflective of mysticism and exclusivity, masonry was lasting ethical core. But at the same time, his will (kidnapping Pamina, ordering our time, too. a movement dedicated to many of the Mozart is also celebrating a minority Monostatos to be flogged, and consigning most progressive impulses of the age – sect, explicitly refuting the dark rumours his enemies to the ‘darkness’, despite his Oliver Mears to ideals of honour, learning, integrity that they are responsible for devilish professed commitment to forgiveness), and comradeship. Certainly it was conspiracies or worse. To us, Mozart’s while his brotherhood is both rigidly opposed to both tyrannical monarchs efforts in this direction can seem puzzling hierarchical and deliberately exclusive. and bloodthirsty revolutionaries. For or even irrelevant, especially given the Women and working class characters 4 5 Synopsis Act 1 Pamina. He is discovered by the Queen of Three Ladies in the service of the Queen the Night, who dismisses him. She gives of the Night save the fainting Tamino her daughter a dagger with which to from a serpent. When they leave to tell murder Sarastro. the Queen, the bird catcher Papageno enters and boasts to Tamino that it was The weeping Pamina is confronted he who killed the creature. The Three and consoled by Sarastro. Tamino and Ladies return to give Tamino a picture of Papageno are told by a priest that they the Queen’s daughter, Pamina, who they must remain silent and refrain from eating, say is enslaved by the evil Sarastro, and a vow that Papageno immediately breaks they padlock Papageno’s mouth for lying. when he takes a glass of water from a Tamino falls in love with Pamina’s face flirtatious old lady. The old lady vanishes in the picture.