The Magic Flute review: Trying to make something of Mozart’s wild music

A prince accepts a mission to rescue a princess in The Magic Flute but not all of it is plausible. Photo: Pat Redmond

Gaiety Theatre, Dublin

★ ★

Perhaps the most ordinary detail to be found in the extraordinary world of Mozart’s opera, staged by Irish National Opera, is its eponymous musical instrument. Narrow in width, and brass in alloy, it is an object of simplicity and familiarity. In other words: the complete opposite of The Magic Flute. 

So severe are the curvatures of Emanuel Schikaner’s libretto, a heavy fantasia of freemason morality and fairy-tale adventure, it’s difficult to find some of it plausible. For instance, when we first meet our hero Tamino (Nick Pritchard), he seems to have been dropped from orbit into a forest - an impossibly handsome prince with barely a backstory. 

He accepts a mission to rescue Anna Devin’s Pamina, princess of the forest natives, who has been captured and imprisoned by the leader of a local priesthood. This Sarastro (Lukas Jakobski) and his followers are bent on introducing “wisdom” into the world, starting with the local pagans. Schikaner never quite showed it as a crusade but it’s got a similar gist. 

If The Magic Flute once agreed with that tune, director Caroline Staunton’s production shows admirable irreverence. With the aid of the excellent Irish Chamber Orchestra players, it syncs the music for comic effect. At one point a guard arrives in the forest searching for Tamino, changing direction with each refrain. What was once heraldry is now anti-climactic. 

That could be a genius conceit for the opera’s Enlightenment era, a period of glorious expansion that, in hindsight, disappointingly excluded. “Every woman must know her place,” says Sarastro, who, in Katie Davenport’s delightful costuming, resembles the head of a Victorian gentleman’s club, surrounded by top hats and twisted moustaches.

When Tamino comes under their influence, he must prove his resolve with a classical performance from the male canon: showing himself as emotionally repressed. Pamina begins to fear that her stoic lover has defected to the patriarchy. 

It’s difficult to imagine how else to play all this than as opera buffa. Devin glows bright with self-awareness of Pamina’s “happiness on earth” shtick. Rachel Croash's envious fairy lady is immensely charming.

But for every gag there’s an over-extended reach for seriousness, as the production advances into Ciaran Bagnall's impressive but domineering temple set. Pritchard’s depiction of Tamino becomes tortured. Finally, a coda showing a people forced off their land is more politically aware than it is stirring. 

In a production trying to do so many things with its wild music, the tone might be best set by the Queen of the Night’s aria. More ghoulish than nightmarish in Audrey Luna’s well-controlled performance, it is dark but light, epic but opulent, simple but elaborate. 

Run ends May 25th.