Die Zauberflöte

As I am now officially grown up and cultured, I decided to go to the opera instead of staying out until all hours. It was a good choice. I am still having difficulty believing that I can go to one of the most famous opera houses in the world for only 3 Euros. We saw Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and it was brilliant.

It's hard to believe it was written over 200 years ago. I thought that Mozart wrote both the libretto and the music but I was wrong, it was actually Emanuel Schikaneder. It was a kind of weird performance and I am still unable to decide how much of it was the opera that was weird and how much was that particular production. Anyway, here we go for those of you who have never seen it...

Lovely overture, lots of which I recognised from my youth when I was something of a musician. Sounds a bit better played by the orchestra than it did on a squeaky, poorly played clarinet I must say!

Act 1

A man all dressed in white, whom I worked out in the second act is called Tamino is being chased by a big dragon/snake. You know it is going to be a good opera when within 3 minutes there is a dragon/snake and fireworks. The dragon/snake is killed by the Three Ladies, all of whom are very buxom and painted different shades of blue and are wearing very big dresses. They all fancy Tamino, who is lying on the floor and they fight over who gets to look after him but then they get bored and leave him on his own. In comes Papageno, a little Diddy Man style green man. He is a bird catcher and sings a song about this and how much he would love a girlfriend. Tamino recovers miraculously from the dragon/snake attack and Papageno tells him that he killed it. The Three Ladies are not best pleased with this so they come and padlock Papageno's mouth shut to punish him for lying. They then explain to Tamino what really happened, and for some reason they show him a picture of Pamina. Even though it is just a painting, he falls in love with her straight away, and this seems a bit silly but I suppose it is just the way things worked in the olden days. At this point, the Queen of the Night comes in wearing the biggest dress I have ever seen. It is lovely, a very dark blue covered in sparkly silver stars. She sings a song and tells Tamino that Pamina (who is her daughter) has been kidnapped by Sarastro and that he must go and rescue her. If he manages, he will be allowed to marry her which is kind of handy for him because he has decided he loves her already! The Queen swishes off and the Ladies give Tamino the eponymous MAGIC FLUTE which will protect him from loads of bad things. It seems that when he plays it loads of weird animals with big heads appear (crocodiles, hippos, a giraffe and several kind of big cats) Tamino decides to take Papageno with him for moral support, even though he talks a lot. Oh, and three boys dressed up as Mozart go with them to help them find Pamina.

The scene changes and suddenly the stage is a kind of wonky cube with lots of different panels and lights that look like lines. It is a bit strange, and eventually I work out that it is Sarastro's house or something. A black monster type thing is being very mean to Pamina. Papageno finds them and tells her that she is about to be rescued in like a second, and while he's at it he has a quick moan about not having a girlfriend. Poor Papageno, I would be his girlfriend. I find his green hair and baggy trousers rather attractive. Then things got a bit weird and I am not really sure what happened, Tamino arrived and wasn't allowed to do something, or had to do some kind of challenge or something. This was the point I wished the people in front of me were using the English lyrics screen rather than the German because then I would perhaps have understood a bit more! Somewhere along the line, Sarastro becomes a goody, not sure how though. Oh, and obviously when Tamino and Pamina saw each other it was love at first sight because that is what always happens. They all go off to have a party or something and Papageno is left on his own with two guards and what appears to be an old woman in a funny mask and a cloak. They talk for a bit and then it was time for the interval, during which we got told off for drinking from bottles of water that we had taken in and not bought in the theatre, shock horror.

Act 2

Ohhhhh, it is all very confusing. Lots of stuff happens, the Queen of the Night sings her famous aria (which I can recreate v accurately, maybe another good choice for kareoke in Japan). Basically everything works out alright in the end, the baddies are thwarted and the goodies all have a good sing and dance about how brilliant everything is. Sorry the synopsis got a bit rubbish, it was TOO HARD to say everything. If you're that interested, either go and see it or Google it, there are probably 16 gazillion synopsises/synopsi/synopses floating around.