Opera Colorado stages just two titles a year now and that leaves the company little room for error.
Each production needs to please opera purists, those folks who like traditional titles delivered conservatively. They’re the loyal customers who buy the expensive tickets and donate generously.
At the same time, it has to excite newcomers, those younger generations raised on the quick-cuts of action movies and the constant blip of high-tech screens. They are opera’s future — if it’s going to have one.
And, like all good operas, it has to be dramatic, engaging, paced, pretty, well-acted and sung like it was the last music to be performed on earth. Lots of pressure there.
“The Magic Flute,” now on stage at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, seems fully aware of its multiple responsibilities and tackles them head on. It’s a busy outing that works hard to be all things to all people. The production ticks enough things off its to-do list that both old and new audiences will likely find it engaging.
You can’t get any more traditional than Mozart and “The Magic Flute” is one of the top five operas produced annually, going strong two centuries in. The fairy tale story, about a prince who must outwit an evil queen and persevere through Herculean tests, has some of the genre’s more exciting arias.
The famous one, the difficult song of vengeance from the devilish Queen of the Night, is the show stopper and that is true of Opera Colorado’s version. Soprano So Young Park hits the piece’s impossible high notes with all the rage they require. Her brilliant purple gown is the exclamation point on her colorful character.
There are other fine vocals, coming when it counts from Jonathan Boyd, as the protagonist Tamino, and Maureen McKay, as his beloved Pamina. Both sing with considerable warmth and they are paired well. Meanwhile, conductor Joseph Mechavich balances the volume of his fine orchestra with extreme sensitivity.
Director Daniel Witzke comes with a background in musical theater and he presents the opera with considerable flash. The costumes are showy and the movement is over-the-top. There are four dancers who flit in and out of this production mysteriously, giving it the sort of edge that might challenge formalists. Newcomers won’t know what to make of it, though they’ll probably go along for the ride.
But the signature of this production is its ambitious set. It’s interesting that the backdrops are more virtual than real. Fire, forests, cathedrals, palaces and floating heads come and go in the form of projections on minimalist pieces of architecture.
Sometimes it works, the scenery keeps your gaze and provides allure to a story that’s notoriously, historically thin. Sometimes, it feels thin itself, temporary, too easy and disposable for a piece that has lasted the test of time.
Still, the sets amount to a reasonable shake-up and only rarely distract from the fine music. Mozart probably wouldn’t mind and his grandchildren, centuries removed, might not mind either.
“THE MAGIC FLUTE” Opera Colorado presents Mozart’s masterpiece on May 5, 8 and 10. Ellie Caulkins Opera House, 14th and Curtis streets in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. $20-$160. 303-468-2030 or operacolorado.org.
Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@denverpost.com or twitter.com/rayrinaldi
