For an opera written more than two centuries ago, the story begins in an unexpected place: a metro platform.
But for director Zou Shuang, the image unlocked a new path into Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Every day, strangers meet, pass one another, and disappear into the crowd. Sometimes, Zou says, you may never see someone again. And sometimes, you unexpectedly encounter a person you thought you had lost forever.
"What if the magic of the opera did not take place in some distant world, but suddenly emerged from a place we pass through every day?" she asks.
That question lies at the heart of a new international production of Mozart's final opera, which will be presented at the 29th Beijing Music Festival on Saturday and Sunday at the China National Opera House.
Rather than beginning with Tamino setting out to find Pamina, Zou's version starts with two people who once loved each other, were separated, and met again on a metro platform. They enter the fantastical world of The Magic Flute as Tamino and Pamina, embarking on a journey that turns the opera's familiar theme of "searching" into one of loss and reunion.
The transformation is visible throughout the production. A train becomes a dragon. Advertisements on the platform come alive. A delivery rider turns into a strange birdman. A street musician becomes Mozart himself and places the magic flute in Tamino's hands. At the end, the journey returns to the same platform where it began, almost as if the entire adventure had been a dream.
For Zou, however, the dream also asks a very contemporary question: What are people searching for today?
"We are all searching for something," she says. "When we are young, it may be love or the future; later it may be direction, certainty, or even ourselves."
The other side of searching, she adds, is loss. Often, it is through loss that people begin to understand what matters most to them.
That makes the opera's famous trials of fire and water more than fantastical theatrical episodes in this production. They become metaphors for the difficulties people encounter in their own lives — and for the question of whether, after those experiences, they still dare to believe in love and to see another person and themselves anew.
For US baritone John Chest, who plays Papageno, one of the opera's most beloved figures, the production's contemporary setting also reminds us of something much simpler: the enduring appeal of being ordinary. Papageno is the comic counterpart to Prince Tamino and a bird-catcher who helps Tamino on his journey.
Chest first performed Papageno in 2013, shortly after joining the Deutsche Oper Berlin ensemble. More than a decade later, he sees Papageno differently.
On the surface, the bird-catcher appears simple, even foolish. But Chest believes the key to understanding him is another quality: sincerity.
"His world is small, and he only knows what he knows," Chest says. "But, as the story progresses and his world expands, he proves that being himself is enough for every situation."
