As moviegoers don bi-toned spectacles in order to have a 3D experience at the cinema, it’s ironic that Minnesota Opera’s latest production at the Ordway Center is a decidedly 2D affair.
The production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” created by the English theater company 1927 and the Komische Opera Berlin has no scenery or props, merely a white wall dotted with revolving trap doors. When they spin, characters emerge to sing the story along, but the set changes all come courtesy of animated projections.
So this “Magic Flute” is a cartoon in which the singers keep their movement to a minimum as they interact with the animation around them.
What could have been a quirky novelty instead turned out to be among the most innovative and imaginative productions I’ve encountered in recent years.
Every scene had some clever and unexpected twist, surrealism and silliness abounding while Mozart’s music was given all the lovely lyricism and engaging energy it requires.
What’s more, it felt like a game changer, the kind of new innovation that might spawn a whole new operatic or theatrical sub-genre, or at least a fair number of productions that will employ similar technology.
Animator Paul Barritt has created a simply drawn, jerkily paced kind of cartooning reminiscent of “Beavis & Butt-Head” and “King of the Hill” with a dash of “Yellow Submarine.” But the ideas he’s developed with collaborators Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky bring out the magic in “The Magic Flute.”
The mystical world that Mozart and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder developed back in 1791 is even more fantastical when populated with owls, dogs and bells that grow legs and dance, a giant spider of a Queen of the Night, and a heroine who sprouts butterfly wings and takes to the sky.
The paradox of this production is that you’re likely to come away from it feeling as if you’ve never seen anything quite like it … and yet you have.
The designers ground the work in images from the silent film era, sometimes subtly — as in the influence of director Georges Melies — sometimes straightforward, like dressing comic foil Papageno as Buster Keaton or heroine Pamina as bobbed-haired Louise Brooks.
What’s more, they’re often caught in spotlights roiling like the distressed celluloid of old film, and the dialogue from the original (“The Magic Flute” is more musical theater than opera) is never spoken, instead projected onto the wall like silent film placards.
The entire cast deserves kudos for executing a staging that appears to require such precise timing that one late cue could throw off all of the action.
Director Tobias Ribitzki has marshaled the troops admirably, and it’s a show full of vivid characterizations and strongly sung arias.
Two sets of leads are used over the course of the production’s nine performances, but the opening night group was impressive, with romantic leads Christie Hageman Conover and Julien Behr bringing beauty to each solo and duet and Andrew Wilkowske finding sadness within Papageno’s mock bravura.
Also reminding listeners of the marvels of Mozart was the Minnesota Opera Orchestra under Aaron Breid. It says something about the musicianship involved that the composer was never upstaged, even in a production as driven by visuals as this.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at rhubbard@pioneerpress.com.
IF YOU GO
What: Minnesota Opera’s production of “The Magic Flute”
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and April 23; 2 p.m. April 27
Where: Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington St., St. Paul
Tickets: $20-$200, available at 612-333-6669 or mnopera.org
Capsule: Magic, indeed.
