Opera
Elixir of life
Rodney Milnes
Those who plan to watch Ingmar Bergman's television production of The Magic Flute on BBC 2 on Boxing Day — and I, trust they will be numbered in more than their tens of thousands — should be warned of two things. First, close Your eyes in the overture, which is composed of audience shots — close-ups of children, mums, gnarled faces, black faces, yellow faces, brown faces, even a face chewing gum, all in furious concentration and cut in time to the music. Bergman's intentions are of the purest, but it can't help looking like a Coca-Cola commercial. Secondly, those of an academic bent must set aside all prejudices. It is no use getting worked up about the restructuring of the plot, massive dialogue cuts, the trimming of repeats and verses, re-ordering, and the omission of three numbers in Act 2, when the 140 minutes that are left are sheer magic.
The production was filmed (director of photography: Sven Nykist) in a studio reconstruction of Drottningholm, and the transformation techniques are those of the eighteenth-century theatre. There is a theatrical feel to the whole undertaking in its use of dressing rooms, wings, exterior and under-stage. Clearly conceived for television in its predominant use of close-ups, the production is aimed at children and at the child-like in all of us. Yet the darker elements are not ignored. The trials take place in a charnel house; in the fire and water episodes Tamino and Pamina encounter the souls in Dante-esque torment of those who have failed; Monostatos is a villian of darkest hue (though light of skin — he has to be after the overture) impersonated with scary intensity by Ragnar Ulfung. His invasion of the temple precincts leading an army of female Nibelungs is properly threatening.
The broadly comic dragon sets the tone of the rest. The only sin of which one could accuse the Three Ladies is that they are faintly lascivious: they caress any man within reach, and Papageno's nervous crossing of his legs in the second quintet is a beautifully timed gag. The Three Spirits are not solemn little demigods, but rumbustuous street urchins with a mean line in snowballing. The staging of Papageno's attempted suicide and duet with Papagenais the funniest I have ever seen. Quite rightly, the little moral homilies with which the work is studded are highlighted by the use of placards and direct address to camera.
The opera is very respectably sung, in Swedish and with good subtitles. The extraordinary thing is that the singers all seem to be actors in a Bergman film, but then singers are not allowed on stage in Sweden unless they can act. Ulrik Cold's Sarastro is of magnetic authority: he must have the most expressive pair of eyes in the business. The Queen (Birgit Nordin) is a pathetic rather than an evil figure, and the reasons for her changes in appearance may become clearer at repeated viewings. She is more omnipresent than in any stage lierformance. Erik Saeden's scholarly Speaker is beautifully judged, and Hakan Hagegard's chubby Papageno doesn't put a laugh wrong. The second priest has a line in throwaways that would delight Dick Lester. Some may find the hero and heroine (Josef Kostlinger and Irma Urrila) a trifle wet, but they certainly look like the hero and heroine of a TV serial.
The whole enterprise is distinctly un-operatic in make-up, gesture and movement. It is not a filmed opera: it is a television opera conceived wholly in terms of that medium, and the most successful attempt to date. Bergman may not have been faithful to the letter of Mozart, but he has been to the spirit, so that child-like trust in humanity that becomes all the more moving the less it appears to be deserved. I found this Flute a most uplifting experience.
The problems attendant upon the production of a small-scale comic opera, L'Efisir d'Amore, in a language the audience does not understand and in a theatre the size of Covent Garden have been solved with much skill. Few producers are as experienced as John Copley in providing just enough visual humour to keep the audience awake without offending the pure in mind, and once again he has struck a fair balance. I must stop writing about decor, as I obviously do not understand it (I seem to hear cheers echoing throughout half the studios of London). The opening was beautiful, a bare stage with bridge silhouetted against a white cloth: the adrenalin flowed. Then they flew in Beni Montresor's sets, which can only be described as fourpence coloured. Most people will love this ingenious jumble of every conceivable hue with costumes to match, and it would be unseasonal to jib at a finale with coloured lights, a flag-waving chorus, Dr Dulcamara's coach leaving the ball and the unfurling of a banner reading 'Viva l'amore (I'll subscribe to that). Those who mourn the passing of the Palladium panto will find some consolation here.
The performance was dominated by Jose Carreras's Nemorino, which was quite beautifully sung. His 'Furtiva lagrima' would have stopped the show at anything other than a Gala. (How cunningly, incidentally, this aria is placed: amid all that rum-ti-turn there are real human emotions at play, and the music brings you up short. It is this darker side to the work that Mr Carreras has few pretentions as an actor, certainly none as a comedian, and thank heavens; he made no attempt to be funny and his performance was touching, human and dignified. The comedy was in the safe hands of Sin Geraint Evans as the quack; whether or not you buy his particular brand of broad humour, you cannot but admire the professional skill' with which he plays the Covent Garden audience for the very fine and rare oldl instrument that it is.
Yasuko Hayashi's Adina was smoothly, often t brilliantly sung, but Adina is a very Italian young lady and a certain Latin temperament was missing. Thomas Allen (Belcore) seemed: over-parted, for once, and his costume was, should have thought, actionable. Lillian Watson's Gianetta was sharply etched, and the ladies' chorus was in fine fettle. In music as elegant as Donizetti's there are few conductors to match John Pritchard on the right night, and this was one of them. The phrasing was warm and supple, the woodwind playing beautifully shaped, the comic passages as crisp and buoyant as the sentimental were swoony. Musically the evening was nigh faultless.
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