Opera Philadelphia stages 'The Magic Flute' at Academy

Mozart's The Magic Flute can be counted on for whimsy of the highest order, but not necessarily for magic. And when you notice during a performance that this is an opera whose main characters undergo tedious fire-and-water rituals just to get married, the piece as a whole isn't always working.

Opera Philadelphia's current production, which opened Friday at the Academy of Music, was reasonably resourceful even if the singers were a bit green, in what amounted to a middling encounter with the least stageable of Mozart's major operas.

Though full of some of the composer's most sublime music, the opera continues to challenge and often defeat companies with its stage-defying mixture of fairy tale and Masonic imagery, as a lost-in-the-woods prince (Tamino) rescues Pamina from an evil cult that turns out to be benevolent, at least in comparison with the girl's mother, the Queen of the Night.

The first act of the Diane Paulus production employed an 18th-century stage-within-a-stage. Like the famous Ingmar Bergman film version of the opera, the viewpoint was as much about the people putting on the show as it was about the show itself. Onstage onlookers included singers who hadn't yet made their entrances. Nice!

In Act II, Pamina and Tamino were inducted into the Masonic cult amid a labyrinth of constantly moving topiary hedges. A bit of magic was evident in imaginatively costumed people portraying the fire the two must walk through. But this is where the opera's pacing unravels, drawing on goodwill built up by sympathetic music-making and captivating singers - equity that the opening lacked.

The usually infallible conductor Corrado Rovaris seemed not to have found his way into the score's combination of folksy simplicity and elemental profundity. Playful moments felt driven; the gravitas was vague. As the Queen of the Night, Rachele Gilmore sang her spectacular arias without much commitment; you heard the notes but not the extravagant expression of a wronged woman.

As Tamino, Antonio Lozano's small, quick vibrato showed a plaintive quality that warmed to the music considerably in Act II. As Pamina, Elizabeth Zharoff had the opposite trajectory, starting sweetly in early moments but becoming vocally aggressive in later ones, which played oddly against her efforts to portray the princess as a fluttery teenage girl.

The best voice was Mark Stone's warm, well-rounded baritone as Papageno, though he was symptomatic of a companywide problem, cluttering his performance with gags that had little character behind them. Jordan Bisch was an usually articulate Sarastro with good baritonal highlights to his bass voice. Though Joseph Gaines had one of the finest voices, his Monostatos characterization lacked any impulse control. As serious as the production was, the staging itself was maddeningly heedless.

But consider the circumstances: This production was a relatively last-minute replacement for a Brazilian one that didn't work out. So Opera Philadelphia did pull a rabbit out of the hat - though a small one.

Presented by Opera Philadelphia. Conducted by Corrado Rovaris. Production by Diane Paulus, stage directed by Ashlie Corcorant.

Cast:

Antonio Lozano . . . Tamino

Elizabeth Zharoff . . . Pamina

Mark Stone . . . Papageno

Jordan Bisch . . . Sarastro

Ben Wager . . . Speaker

Rachele Gilmore . . . Queen of

the Night

Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at the Academy of Music. www.operaphila.org or 215-893-1018. EndText