Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (video)

Semi-staged performance

“Gerald Finley is especially winning as Papageno.” New York Times

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conductor: John Eliot Gardiner
Performers:

Tamino: Michael Schade
Pamina: Christiane Oelze
Papageno: Gerald Finley
The Queen of the Night: Cyndia Sieden
Sarastro: Harry Peeters
Papagena: Constanze Backes
Speaker: Detlef Roth
Monostatos: Uwe Peper
Three Ladies: Susan Roberts, Carola Gruber, Maria Jonas
Three Boys: Andreas Dieterich, Jan Andreas Mendel, Florian Wöller
Two Men in Armour: Paul Tindall, Richard Savage
Second Priest: Robert Johnston
Pilobolus Dance Theatre
The Monteverdi Choir
The English Baroque Soloists

Recorded: Live at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam 1995
Format: Classical, PAL
Language German
Label: DG Archiv Produktion 072 447-3 32 AH
VHS Release Date: 16 Sep 1996
Run Time: 160 minutes
ASIN: B00004R6S6

Click photo above for production details & more photos

Youtube clips of Gerry as Papageno from this video

What the critics say

David Blum, New York Times, 17 August 1997

In Mozart Operas, Light and Shade In Sight and Sound

With so much recent opera direction given over to self-indulgence and pointless novelty, the videos of three Mozart works conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, on Archiv, are most welcome. In all three — ”Le Nozze di Figaro,” ”Cosi Fan Tutte” and ”Die Zauberflote” — the composer is, by and large, well served.

These videos, filmed in performance, are an offshoot of Mr. Gardiner’s CD recordings of the seven mature Mozart operas, works that, in Mr. Gardiner’s words, ”together form perhaps the most perfect synthesis of action, words and music achieved by any composer.” The synthesis extends to a rounded humanity: a meticulous balance between light and shade.

So it comes as a relief to find these works directed with the deft, sensitive touch they deserve and without the sort of pseudo-psychoanalytical ”interpretation” imposed by Peter Sellars in his video productions. True, Mozart furnishes more than comedies of manners. But as deep as the shadows may run, he brightens the spirit in the telling.

Here, the characters created by Mozart and his worldly-wise librettist Lorenzo da Ponte thrive in their own setting, with an authenticity instantly recognizable to a modern audience. Indeed, when it comes to frankness in matters of love and sex, the late 18th century speaks directly to the late 20th. …

…”Die Zauberflote” is a major test for any director or conductor, and Mr. Gardiner is both, again collaborating with Mr. Medcalf. Complementary elements — the terrestrial and the spiritual, fairy tale and Masonic initiation — seek reconciliation.

Mr. Gardiner’s production (Archiv 440 072 547; laser disk and VHS cassette) is costumed but only semistaged, a fact that in no way impedes the sense of fantasy. On the stage of the Concertgebouw inAmsterdam, he expands the action to various spaces around the orchestra and makes imaginative use of the Pilobolus Dance Theater to evoke Egyptian temple arches, wild animals and the trials of fire and water.

The entire cast offers lovely timbre, exemplary diction, refined ensemble and lively characterization. If Michael Schade (Tamino), Christiane Oelze (Pamina) and Harry Peeters (a very young Sarastro) do not always probe the full profundity of their roles, they are never insincere and do not strive for artificial effects. Gerald Finley is especially winning as Papageno.

In his conducting, Mr. Gardiner finds constant delight in the score’s unique world of enchantment. But at times he lets gracefulness stand in for a deeper emotion. In the March of the Priests, Sarastro’s ”In diesen heil’gen Hallen” and the introduction to the first-act finale, the tempos are too fast and the string sound is too pale to convey a luminous sense of transfiguration.

But not all tempos are fast. When Pamina greets her beloved ”Tamino mein,” before the two undertake the perilous trials of initiation, Mr. Gardiner lets the andante unfold unhurriedly, eloquently fulfilling this central moment of commitment. And when the men of the Monteverdi Choir, invoking the power of Osiris, blend their tone with the sonority of the 18th-century trombones, one experiences the profound serenity in simplicity that characterizes the last phase of Mozart’s art.