Review: At Lyric Opera of Chicago, ‘Magic Flute’ is a chilly Berlin import, with digital animation than can upstage the singers

For many, the return to the opera house has been a risk willingly taken — in service of the palpable human desire for live connection and an overwhelming need for the kind of emotional sustenance derived from world-class singers performing from their hearts.

So a note of a caution: Barrie Kosky and Suzanne Andrade’s staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” mostly likely will not fully fulfill that expectation. If there ever was a production that could be enjoyed adequately on a screen, this is one. That’s because the directorial conceit is a screen. Mozart’s 1791 “Singspiel” is, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, subjugated to an animated frame combining human performers not just with a visually chaotic digital backdrop but with such co-stars as a cat that can explode itself into pieces and then reappear to wag its tale.

To be clear: this staging, which has been a hit in Berlin, does not just employ digital scenery. The level of integration is far greater. The singers perform mostly on tiny, distinct platforms that operate like a revolving doors. Frequently, a portion of the singer’s body is animated, meaning that the performer must, say, match the upper part of the torso (and the voice) with kinetic, digital feet. To say that the singers must hit their marks is to understate; everything here is set and preordained to within a matter of inches. These are not just digital environments, these are full-blown digital performances, meaning that the environment is constantly moving and, inevitably, competing with the singers.

For some, this was all clearly too much. After intermission, a striking number of seats around me no longer contained their patrons.

But let’s stipulate some matters. You can’t hold Lyric responsible for the questionable timing. Kosky, the artistic director of the Komische Oper Berlin, co-created this production some 10 years ago and it’s since played all over the world, although this is the first time in Chicago. The vision is certainly extensive: the animation reportedly represents three years of work from Paul Barritt.

Moreover, you could argue that craving emotional sustenance or even psychological complexity from this work is absurd. “The Magic Flute” is the tale of the lost Prince Tamino (Pavel Petrov) and a bird-catcher named Papageno (Huw Montague Rendall) on their quest to rescue Pamina (Ying Fang), daughter of the Queen of the Night (Lila Dufy), from the horrible Sarastro (Tareq Nazmi). The work has highly fantastical characters, allegoric form, and, given its genesis at librettist Emanuel Schikaneder’s Freihaustheater auf der Wieden (just prior to Mozart’s death), a formative interest in special effects. There are myriad references to Hanswurst and other endemic forms of popular German theater. Spectacle was baked into the conception.

So, to my mind, it’s not that this production does violence to some notion of the original, it’s that the digital environment is eclectic to the point that it cannot root the audience.

Barritt is, at some points, creating a silent film, a white-faced homage to Fritz Lang, German Expressionism and Buster Keaton. Elsewhere, though, you get Terry Gilliam-esque cutouts, straight from Monty Python. Occasionally, the images move into Asian martial arts and video games, sound effects and all. Sometimes the images are duplicated, Busby Berkeley style. It’s intentionally eclectic, I suppose, but the dispersion also dissipates the dramatic tension inherent to the singing, and to any opera based on a quest. It’s fine when environments are well established before the humans open their mouths. More troubling when they intervene throughout.

The principal cast is most impressive at the requisite precision. Petrov, a plaintive Belarusian tenor, is the most successful when it comes to humanizing the experience, although the sheer stasis and force of the German bass Nazmi’s performance also is a blow in the right direction. Dufy, confined by bizarre costuming, persists, and Fang, the Chinese soprano, beautifully renders “Ach, ich fuhl’s,” while gamely wresting with a conception that evokes Mary Pickford, bobbed wig and all.

Your mileage may vary with one, as the saying goes. I suspect you’ll either buy it fully or, like me, prefer Julie Taymor’s memorable production that simplified rather than compounded and focused more on human feelings of aspiration, the need for love, the search for truth. That’s where most of us are at right now.

Review: “The Magic Flute”

When: Through Nov. 27

Where: Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive

Running time: 2 hours, 40 mins.

Tickets: $39-$319 at 312-827-5600 or lyricopera.org

COVID protocol: Lyric Opera of Chicago requires proof of COVID-19 vaccination, as well as masks in the opera house.