中国日报网

Mozart's opera Magic Flute gets creative treatment

Chen Nan
When the production of Mozart's opera Magic Flute by the Komische Oper Berlin and British theater group 1927, is staged in Beijing from July 21 to 23 at the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, audiences will see an imaginative mix of an animated film, live action, a silent movie and the actors.

When the production of Mozart's opera Magic Flute by the Komische Oper Berlin and British theater group 1927, is staged in Beijing from July 21 to 23 at the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, audiences will see an imaginative mix of an animated film, live action, a silent movie and the actors.

The production, which premiered at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2012, has been touring the world since then.

It has been staged in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Speaking about the performance, Ulrich Lenz, the drama consultant of Komische Oper Berlin, says: "Anything that you cannot explain with words can be done with music and with images.

"The technique is new but it is still a story that appeals to people from 9 to 90."

The Magic Flute is an two-act opera by Mozart set to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder.

It premiered in 1791 in Vienna, just two months before the composer's death.

The story is about young prince Tamino being pursued by an evil snake, and then finds himself in the land of the Queen of the Night.

Then, after the queen helps kill the snake, Tamino meets Papageno, the queen's birdcatcher. Soon, it is revealed to Tamino that a distant king, Sarastro, has abducted the queen's beautiful daughter, Pamina.

After seeing her portrait, Tamino falls in love with her.

Later, with the help of a magic flute, given to him by the queen, Tamino and Papageno go on a quest to save Pamina.

Meanwhile, in Sarastro's palace, Pamina is being tormented by the slavekeeper Monostatos. When Tamino and Papageno arrive at the palace and are surprised to find that Sarastro is not the cruel tyrant they thought.

It turns out that Sarastro abducted Pamina because the gods had intended that she was to marry Tamino.

After passing a series of tests by the priests Tamino marries Pamina.

Barrie Kosky, the artistic director of Komische Oper Berlin, who had watched the opera as a young boy, hoped to put on a different production of The Magic Flute, but he did not get round to doing it until he met co-artistic directors Paul Barritt and Suzanne Andrade in 2010.

"We had not done The Magic Flute at the Komische Oper Berlin for a while, so I had to find a way to do it differently," says Kosky.

"A friend told me that I should go and see this British performance when it was touring Hanover, and within the first 30 seconds of the show I thought this could be an interesting way of approaching the subject."

Animator and illustrator Barritt founded the company 1927 along with writer-actress Suzanne Andrade in 2005.

The company has won acclaim with works, such as Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and The Animals and Children Took to the Streets.

The Magic Flute marked 1927's first opera.

Speaking about her role, Brigitte Geller, the actress who plays the daughter of Queen, Pamina, in The Magic Flute, says: "For actors, it is quite a challenge to perform in this production because you cannot see what's happening onstage. The actual play is behind you.

"The conductor is also far away from you."

She also says that usually a singer moves onstage in an opera production, but in this production, she has to move to the animations and films projected on the large screen behind.

If you go

7:30 pm, July 21-23. Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, 9 Nandajie, Tianqiao, Xicheng district, Beijing. 400-635-3355.