When the Queen of the Night (Brenda Rae) appears, their mother rises trance-like from the dinner table to deliver her stratospheric aria from a vast height.Īll this is effective, allowing the grandfather’s narration to replace a lot of the original dialogue (though speaking over too much of Mozart’s music). When Papageno (Michael Nagl) arrives, the boys object that he is their butcher’s son. Suddenly it all comes to life, and they get drawn into the story, acting along, in the case of the three boys (excellent voices from the Vienna Boys Choir), hyperactively.ĭirector Lydia Steier’s take on Mozart’s Magic Flute is admirably ingenious the rambling plot, in which good and evil fight it out in the realm of the powerful Sarastro, can bear a wealth of interpretation. To relieve the tension, a kindly grandfather (Roland Koch) takes the boys off to their bedroom and reads them a story about the prince Tamino escaping from a dragon.

A dysfunctional family sits around the dinner table: a stern father, an eccentric mother, and three boys late for the meal.

Sf opera magic flute review