Opera
The Message of Innocence CAIRNS By DAVID It is as if, to cover our discomfort, we had to invent loud lies about the work (such as that hoary old parrot-cry that the plot changed course in mid-composition, for which there is not one shred of evidence, internal or external), had te be wilfully blind to its embarrassing truths; we cannot even recognise the skill with which the purely theatrical joinery of the work has been managed. To call the text banal is to admit that we have failed to understand the music; if we say that Schikaneder is too superficial. for Mozart, we really mean that Mozart is too profound for us. Once the words were impreg- nated by the notes they lost all separate 'identity, could no longer be thought of in isolation. The hollow symbols—Wisdom, Truth, Humanity, Love—were made flesh and blood by the sacra- mental power of the music. This is not aitY sophistry but musico-dramatic fact. If the simplicity of The Magic Flute, that won- derful, holy simplicity, refuses to be pinned down in the opera house, this is not because of flaws which only the spell of an exceptional performance of the music can conceal, but be- cause designers and producers are too frightened of its 'nevety,' its divine directness, to see the moral which is under their noses: the message of the innocence of the three Genii and their plain C major radiance which leads Tamino to the truth. In staging The Magic Flute, the means cannot be too ingenious; the final result cannot appear too simple.
At Glyndebourne a combination of too little talent, too much thought and the wrong kind of cleverness never looks like succeeding. Oliver Messel's decor has the usual prettiness, the usual Whimsicality of styles, the usual irrelevance. The halts for a change of scenery ignore that indivisibility of Nature which is at the heart ol both music and drama, and tend to stop the action just where it is imperative that it flows forward unimpeded. Even without the pauses, the deadly, inevitable air of chic which sur- rounds those charming leafy vistas, those elegant ruins, would be fatal.
Where Mr. Messel is fundamentally frivolous, the conductor, Colin Davis, is encumbered with Profundity. To conduct The Magic Flute one has almost, when it comes to it, to forget all one knows and lay oneself helplessly in its hands. The revelation does not come precisely because Mr. Davis- tries too hard for it. Everything is there—love, knowledge, understanding—except simplicity. The cumulative effect of his tempi is excessive deliberation, especially in the chorale of the Armed Men and passage in the same tempo which follows it, both the Queen of Night's arias, the maestoso chorus in the first act, Pamina's 'Herr, ich bin zwar Verbreeherin: Some, already slow, are brought to a halt by the too-significant lengthening of a phrase or rest in the music; a definite pulse is present, but too deli- cate to tolerate so much rubato. Even the B flat Trio in the second act achieves an ideal moderato only to be spoiled by the too-conscious drawing cut of the cadence twelve bars before the end.
Yet it is a near thing. The best moments— all the Papageno music, Pamina and the Genii— have that simple, unembarrassed radiance that is the secret of the work. The rest needs only a touch to come alive—if only the singers Were better. Glyndebourne used to give great performances of Mozart. Now, secure of its fashionable reputation among people who hardly know what opera they are seeing let alone who wrote it, it seems to pay less and less attention to vital questions of Mozartian casting. Even this year's admired Don Giovanni could include —beside the Elvira of a generation, the noble and excellent Ligabue—an astonishingly inade- quate Commendatore and a Don vlir is little more than a cypher. In The Magic Flute there is a passable trio of Ladies: there is Carlos Fellers admirable Speaker; and there is Geraint Evans, a marvellous Papageno who alone, of the central characters, reveals the universal human truths under the surface. For the rest there is Filar Lorengar, a prettily accomplished singer and an utterly superficial Pamina; Richard Lewis, a robust Tamino who never for a moment suggests the glimmering of an idea as to what all those confounded mysteries are about; Mihaly Szekely, who three years ago was a ripe and splendid Osmin, but whose ill-disciplined Sarastro looks like a bibulous archbishop and brings a devastating air of Moral Rearmament to the pro- ceedings; and Gwyn Griffiths, whose gruff bari- tone voice cannot possibly convey the horrid glee and dancing, priapic rage of Monostatos's niusic. It is a poor crew, and it ensures, before we begin, that we shall remain safely this side ol enlightenment.
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