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Georg Zeppenfeld as Sarastro (Photo: Wiener Staatsoper / Sofia Vargaiová)

What exactly is Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte? Fairy tale? Crowd-pleasing pantomime? Essay on the Enlightenment? Or a Masonic ritual? It’s a puzzle that directors have to unravel. Amusingly, the programme book for this new production at the Wiener Staatsoper – opening on Mozart’s birthday – carries an image of a Rubik’s Cube. Czech director Barbora Horáková, making her house debut, doesn’t entirely solve it.

She has plenty of ideas and things start promisingly. Act 1 begins with the Three Boys – teens on bikes – breaking into a haunted house on a dark and stormy night. Think Gothic Hogwarts: a staircase with iron bannisters, crows, a piano covered in dust, walls lined with paintings, which later morph into portraits of Pamina. The bewitched teens flee, later to turn into furry-eared gremlins. Falko Herold’s animations, a key feature throughout the production, are tremendous.

Horáková toys with the idea of entrapment: Tamino stumbles in and gets his foot caught in a bear trap; the chattering birdcatcher Papageno – descending on a chandelier – is caged by the Three Ladies, an eerie trio of Wednesday Addams clones; the black-winged Queen of the Night enters in a display case; Pamina is locked up in the basement, guarded by Monostatos, here a stoker feeding coal into the boiler, thus getting around one of the opera’s PC problems (he is a Moor in Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto). Isabella Gregor updates the text here.

As one would expect in a Magic Flute, there is humour. Masonic cult leader Sarastro makes his entrance on a crescent moon, dressed in the Queen of the Night’s cobalt blue gown, tossing a long wig. Monostatos and his fellow stokers, enchanted by Papageno’s magic bells – a musical box – step in time to a jig straight out of Mary Poppins.

Serena Sáenz as the Queen of the Night (Photo: Wiener Staatsoper / Sofia Vargaiová)

But, things start to fall flat in Act 2. The haunted house idea is abandoned and any directorial threads become frayed. Things hit a low when Papageno hits the bottle during a charmless 'Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen' and when Tamino and Pamina face the trials of fire and water saddled with aged puppets of themselves strapped to their backs. (Seriously, what is it with directors and puppets?) Horáková then plays the finale in contemporary dress, which is far too late in the day to suddenly plead 'relevance' to Mozart’s fairy tale opera.

The driving force behind this new production had been former music director, much loved in Vienna, Franz Welser-Möst. Two weeks ago, he sadly withdrew due to side effects after his recent cancer treatment. House regular Bertrand de Billy replaced him. Replacing another conductor late into the rehearsal period, when ideas about the musical approach have been formed, cannot be easy but that is little excuse for the abysmal conducting on opening night. De Billy’s tempi were sprightly enough, but he often allowed the orchestra to run ahead of his singers, at other times lagging behind. The Act 1 finale was a car crash, singers, chorus and orchestra all operating at different tempi for a few disconcerting moments.

Vocally, it was a mixed evening too. Slávka Zámečníková sang with limpid tone as a wonderful Pamina and bass Georg Zeppenfeld was typically sonorous as a dignified Sarastro – sheer class. Julian Prégardien, making his Staatsoper debut, sang Tamino with a fine lyric tenor – a tender ‘portrait aria’ – although there was tightness to a few top notes. Another house debutant, Ludwig Mittelhammer, was an engaging Papageno, although his baritone is a little small scale.

Serena Sáenz’s first aria as the Queen of the Night came off better than her more famous 'Der Hölle Rache' where timing and intonation went awry after the spitfire coloratura. Ilia Staple was a sparky Papagena (and a deft puppeteer for 'old Papagena') and Matthäus Schmidlechner wheedled effectively as Monostatos. The Three Ladies blended rather better than the Three Boys.

A muddled, disappointing evening for the Haus am Ring.