{"id":6161,"date":"2026-03-07T12:11:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T10:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/?p=6161"},"modified":"2026-04-03T19:55:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:55:37","slug":"w-a-mozarts-die-zauberflote-by-barrie-kosky-suzanne-andrade-and-antonio-foglinani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/03\/07\/w-a-mozarts-die-zauberflote-by-barrie-kosky-suzanne-andrade-and-antonio-foglinani\/","title":{"rendered":"W. A. Mozart\u2019s Die Zauberfl\u00f6te<\/em> by Barrie Kosky & Suzanne Andrade and Antonio Foglinani"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are only a few Mozart pieces I\u2019ve consistently liked and appreciated (particularly KV 216, 219, 488, 527, 608, and 626), and Die Zauberfl\u00f6te<\/em> isn\u2019t necessarily among them. But a friend invited me to come along, plus it\u2019s a rerun of a rather famous production I\u2019d never seen. It was fun, the opera has many nice melodies after all, and there\u2019s Pamina\u2019s aria in g minor that\u2019s always been my local favorite.<\/p>\n

As for the ensemble, there were highs and lows, particularly as not all highs and lows came out as they\u2019re supposed to come out, let\u2019s put it that way. The romantic leading roles, however, were fine\u2014David Fischer\u2019s Tamino and Heidi Elisabeth Meier\u2019s Pamina were a delight to listen to, the latter outstandingly so. The audience was twitchy enough that I anticipated some hardcore fans to go nuclear, but nothing happened, and there were probably no hardcore fans present in the first place. The orchestra got into the groove relatively quickly and delivered a pleasant performance.<\/p>\n

The production, I didn\u2019t care for it, although the concept sounds exciting and promises fun. There is no set design because there is no set; instead, it\u2019s a multimedia staging where the performers are real and everything else consists of projected cartoonish animations. These animations aren\u2019t bad, not at all. But they\u2019re generally a bit too agitated to enjoy the music, and they don\u2019t come together into a relatable, consistent whole. Most of these animations use silent movie imagery from the 1920s with Max Schreck vibes and steampunky Fritz Lang look-and-feels on the one hand and whimsically-dark Tim Burton aesthetics on the other, augmented by medievalish memento moris, copious doses of Edelmann, and emoticons reminiscent of Instagram animations. (All of which, one should add, manages to crank the hopelessly confused libretto\u2019s already rampant misogyny up to 11.) Plus, many recitatives are cut out, with their lines flippantly abbreviated and projected as speech bubbles, mysteriously accompanied by various fortepiano compositions by Mozart that are not part of the opera.<\/p>\n

But all in all it was entertaining, and so were the gin and tonics we had afterward at a fancy cocktail bar.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Die Zauberfl\u00f6te<\/em><\/a>, Vienna, 1791. Composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, written by Emanuel Schikaneder. Directed by Barrie Kosky & Suzanne Andrade (production) and Antonino Fogliani (music). A production<\/a> of the Komische Oper Berlin in collaboration with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, March 5, 2026.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ud83c\udfb5 Entertaining, but not for opera aficionados.<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-archive","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6161"}],"version-history":[{"count":61,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6371,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6161\/revisions\/6371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}