Opera
Die Zauberflote (Glyndebourne)
Bored and angry
Rodney Milnes
It is unusual to feel bored and angry at one and the same time, certainly at a traditionally well-run opera house like Glyndebourne. But Peter Sellars's new production of The Magic Flute — or rather of those parts of it that he could be bothered to direct — is very boring indeed; a less polite and patient audience would have given it the bird, particularly during the endless, embarrassing pauses in the second act when he couldn't think of anything to do. One longed for George Gale and a hearty, gruff bellow of Tor heaven's sake get on with it'. And angry because what took the stage was more than just a waste of everyone's time: it was a betrayal of both Mozart's genius and Sel- lars's own undeniable talent.
The story so far: Sellars is famous mainly for his Mozart-Da Ponte triptych, seen and developed at Pepsico Summerfare in New York State, recently filmed for television and toured in Europe, and for the creative input he has brought to two new operas, Osborne's The Electrification of the Soviet Union (Glyndebourne) and Adams's Nix- on in China (Houston and Edinburgh). In both latter cases he acted as far more than just director — both the titles were his, for a start — and it doesn't take much reading between the lines of essays published by composers and librettists to gain the im- pression that his interference was resented, and that both operas might have been more successful had he restricted himself to telling the singers where to stand and lighting them prettily. It is an open secret that Sir Harrison Birtwistle, having attended the premiere of Electrification, had Sellars replaced forthwith as producer of his forthcoming Gawain.
Attending the Da Ponte triptych at Purchase last year was a spellbinding ex- perience. Whether or not one felt the productions were valid took second place at the time to the vibrant theatrical excite- ment they released, especially as played by a recognisable Sellars repertory company of loyal and trusting singers. All three were famous for being updated to contemporary New York: Figaro set in an apartment atop Trump Tower, Cosi in a surburban Despi- na's Diner, Giovanni on the streets of Spanish Harlem. The last-named, which told a tale of dope-dealers and a split personality (Giovanni/Leporello), was the most stunning of the three, a series of powerful theatrical images at the conclu- sion of which the earth literally moved. Doubts set in when you noticed that Sellars had to write his own detailed programme synopses, and when it occurred to you that had audiences en masse understood what was being sung in 18th-century Italian (no surtitles) then at least two of the produc- tions would have made no sense and collapsed into incoherence. Sellars was responding solely to musical impulses, and let the text go hang. In other words, as in the case of the new operas, he is putting himself right up there with composer and librettist, and telling them across the cen- turies what to do. Modesty, any hint of self-doubt, are plainly not part of his make-up. One doesn't know whether to admire and envy his chutzpah, or castigate him for being an arrogant little twat.
What he has done to the Flute is remove all Schikaneder's spoken dialogue and replace it with occasional, highly selective titles. At a blow he jettisons comedy, character and narrative. There is no sense of a journey, no light and dark, no good and evil, no hint of the reconciliation of opposites that Mozart and Schikaneder proposed in their detailed, wholly logical treatment. In their place is a series of disparate, incoherent images, some in- teresting, some banal, set against back- drops of Los Angeles in the Sixties Tamino pursued by the serpent of dope (promising, but not developed), the Three Ladies as the Andrews Sisters, the Queen of Night as Mrs Marcos, Sarastro a guru, hints of Charles Manson, Pamina's portrait glimpsed on a television monitor (a straight lift from Kupfer's Orfeo).
None, one might suggest, makes as much sense to a Glyndebourne audience as it could to a Californian one, but then communication seems low on the list of Sellars's priorities. Those who don't know the piece won't have the remotest idea what is going on; those who do could with some justification demand their money back. Nothing that happens on stage is to the tiniest degree a worthy response to Mozart's vision, which is presumably what led Max Loppert in the Financial Times to dub this 'the flattest, laziest, emptiest piece of work in festival history', with which I heartily and rather crossly agree.
The singers are left stranded — even Sellars-rep members like James Mad- dalena, whose Papageno, deprived of humour, is just a depressive who wears his Y-fronts outside his tights. Kurt Streit sings Tamino extremely well; few of the rest of the cast reach the vocal standards one expects at Glyndebourne. Some, you feel, were cast for how they look rather than how they sing. Lothar Zagrosek's conduct- ing is worthy and dull: his heart can't have been in it.
How could this be allowed to happen? One does not have to be Miss Marple to deduce that the decision to dispense with half the opera was taken at a fairly late stage: timings on the tickets and in the programme presuppose a complete per- formance. Is it simply a case that Sellars has been too busy touring and filming his Da Ponte productions to sit down and think seriously about the Flute? Is every- one at Glyndebourne so mesmerised bya man whose charm and plausibility are said to be formidable that they failed to stop and question, and so released a juggernaut careering to disaster? It's all very worrying.
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