Silent movies at the opera: Die Zauberflöte at the Komische Oper Berlin

It is not every day that you go to the opera and experience roughly two hours of singers hooked to a blank wall, but that is exactly what was on the menu last Saturday night at the Komische Oper here in Berlin. And it was awesome.



Stagings of Die Zauberflöte can be problematic. On the one hand, there's the traditional production, a la the Staatsoper: a good, solid fairy tale with extremely awkward misogynist and racist moments. On the other are regie productions, wherein it is attempted to make the misogyny and racism into some sort of lofty thing, which never works. The production at the Komische Oper manages to straddle the two while not making the dated awfulness of Monostatos and Sarastro too painful. How? With the aforementioned blank wall.

Picture a single huge, blank surface, which contains a number of doors for the characters to go through. Now picture everything you know about the silent film era. Now merge the two. The result is a wonderful storybook telling of the opera. The opera itself becomes a silent film: there are no props and no spoken dialogue. Instead, the recits become silent film piano (a riff on a Mozart Fantasie) with the dialogue projected onto the wall. And once the curtain goes up, that white wall becomes a riot of color and excitement, filled with strange projections of flowers, fairies, trees, houses, cats, and elephants, as well as an array of strangely geared machines, through which our heroes make their journey. The singers appear at different levels in the wall, standing on tiny platforms, hooked up with seat belts. In keeping with the silent film/storybook feel of the production, they were a mix of fantastical and '20s. Pamina wore a LBD and a Louise Brooks haircut (except for the brief time when she gave into Sarastro's assertion that women must be ruled by men, in which she was dressed in a black Victorian gown); Tamino a tux; Papageno the mustard yellow suit and straw hat of a particularly sleezy carpet salesman. The Three Ladies wore awesome coats and fabulous hats. The Queen of the Night was a giant spider. Monastatos was albino. The Magic Flute itself was a woodland fairy and Papageno's Magic Bells were bells with chubby dancing legs coming out of the bottoms.

Some things have to be seen to be believed.



Frankly, I found the production so impressive that I didn't once get sucked into the feminist rage pit that I normally do when seeing this opera.

At the heart of this Zauberflöte is Suzanne Andrade of the London-based performance company 1927. As they explain on the Komische Oper website, "At the heart of 1927’s practice is the desire to explore the relationship between live actor and animation to create dynamic and innovative live theatre. 1927 fuse, merge and mix creative mediums to create a unique performance style." This production is certainly that, a marriage of acting, animation and music that had the audience bouncing with glee.

But the music? What about the music?

Nicole Chevalier as Pamina won the night for the quality of her singing and acting. Her soprano was rich and clear, filling the entire house straight to the back. In comparison, Peter Sonn's Tamino was unremarkable, and Julia Novikova's Königen sounded a bit faint and strained (though to be fair, it must be rough work to sing that coloratura while bolted to a wall and dressed as a spider). Alexey Antonov's Sarastro was fine, as was Tom Erik Lie's Papageno. The weakest link was Monastatos, sung by Stephan Boving. Whether due to a bad night or bad training, he just couldn't fill the house. The strongest singers besides Chevalier, frankly, were the Three Ladies, sung by Mirka Wagner, Karolina Gumos and Caren von Oijen.

The Komische Oper orchestra, under Kristiina Poska, sounded excellent-and might I note that this was the first woman conductor I've seen since moving to Europe. Bravo, madama. Silent Film Piano was played by Peter Meiser, who married that genre's tinkly hilarity with one of Mozart's Fantasies in a way that made this girl grin.

All in all, if you're able to get out to the Komische Oper and see this performance, do. It was fabulous and awesome and, not least, fun. I can't praise it enough.