MUSIC 3.5 stars

STAGING 4 stars

The Magic Flute used to be thought of as every child’s ideal entry-level experience of opera because of its fairy-tale elements, its blend of simple terror and low comedy and its transformation scenes. In fact by the time the opera limps into its second act, with heavy allusions to Masonic ritual and bizarre physical trials that establish nothing -except that Prince Tamino will put up with a lot of mumbo-jumbo to be allowed to marry Pamina – you can sense even an adult audience tuning out.

Faced with such a problematic work of musical genius, WNO’s director Daisy Evans decided to rewrite the opera for Welsh National Opera. Not the music, thank God, but she tweaked the libretto and many of the lyrics as they appeared in English surtitles. Gone is Monostatos as the Moorish would-be rapist, gone is any reference to the Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris, freemasonry or the untrustworthiness of women. Papageno is no longer duped into believing his true love is an ancient crone. Even the magic flute has disappeared. Although it is alluded to repeatedly throughout the opera, it is now a glowing light sabre.

Llinos Haf Jones (Young One) ,Quirijn de Lang (Papageno), Sophie Williams (Young One( (c) Craig Fuller

Evans’s reimagining of the opera has Sarastro (King of the Day) and the Queen of the Night formerly married (as depicted in the pre-overture). Pamina and Tamino are childhood friends at the court of the queen. This scenario makes a lot of sense. It explains why Sarastro kidnaps his own daughter from the Queen. It also explains why Tamino immediately signs up to rescue Pamina. It’s not just an enticing picture presented to him by the Queen’s three ladies, he recognises his childhood friend. And Monostatos is an academic employed by Sarastro to teach Pamina all the academic knowledge she missed while living with her disruptive midnight mother.

Many problems were ironed out in this technicolour production than normally slip by in less ambitious Flutes but Daisy Evans' libretto had some lines that creaked, especially Pamina at Sarastro’s court moaning 'I miss my mum' and later complaining that the Queen of the Night 'kept me in the dark'.

However there were some great performances. As Tamino, South African tenor Thando Mjandana has a beautiful heroic voice. He has recently played Nemorino and Don Basilio but he clearly has a non-comic tenor persona inside him too. April Koyejo-Audiger as Pamina displayed a wonderful clarity to her voice as the opera progressed. Samoan Jonathan Lemalu in his Dr Johnson wig was a Sarastro with true rational dignity but his voice couldn’t handle those thrilling low notes. Davies was a rather depressed Papageno but with Jenny Stafford as his bucolic Papagena there developed genuine and enthusiastic sexual chemistry.

The direction had some stunning moments too, the best of which was the Queen of the Night’s Act II aria staged amid a circle of flashing lights and floating dry ice clouds (thus resembling the Milos Foreman version in his film Amadeus). One of the other reasons this number worked so well was that Daisy Evans allowed the soloist to dominate the stage, rather than upstaging them with bits of subsidiary action. Poor Jonathan Lemalu had his most compassionate Sarastro aria (Ein Mensch) undermined by Monostatos (Alun Rhys-Jenkins) wandering in halfway through to observe the action. 

Jonathan Lemalu (Sarastro), Raven McMillion (Pamina) (c) Craig Fuller

Most counterproductive of all were the birds that were puppeteered throughout the opera, causing distraction in the sky or on the shoulders of singers. No situation was so dramatic, no song so beautiful that it couldn’t be upstaged by having a paper bird flying by.

Daisy Evans did a good job rewriting Schikenader. She should have had more faith in her ideas and less reliance on flappy birds.