The Magic Flute, Scottish Opera, review

After enduring more than my fair share of stinkers recently, what a pleasure it is to report on a sure-footed and brightly entertaining production of The Magic Flute, directed by someone who has known the opera from the inside out for 40 years – Sir Thomas Allen, who first sang Papageno in the early 1970s.

His is not a Magic Flute for intellectuals or mystics. It doesn’t dig into its roots in the Rosicrucian Enlightenment or unlock its Masonic symbolism. It doesn’t even try to shape the pieces of the notoriously broken-backed plot into coherence.

Sir Thomas’s unabashedly eclectic approach is outlined in a programme note. The points of reference here are Scottish variety, the collections of Sir John Soane and William Hunter, women such as Rosalind Franklin whose contributions to scientific research have been sidelined, and the great industrial structures of Sir Thomas’s native County Durham.

What emerges from this heady brew, brought to the boil in Simon Higlett’s richly colourful and textured designs and Kit Hesketh-Harvey’s nicely judged translation, is a stand-up comedian of a Papageno, a grumpily patriarchal Sarastro who won’t take Pamina seriously, and a set that looks half like the engine room of a steel ship or factory and half like an antiquarian’s library.

Make of this what you will, but don’t ask any awkward questions: it all freewheels without the brakes of logic. The trick of showing Tamino as an audience member pulled out of his seat by the MC Papageno isn’t followed through, and I can’t tell you why Sarastro’s male priesthood wear stovepipe hats and look like Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

But that’s The Magic Flute for you – a marvellous spectacular mess of a pantomime, which Sir Thomas animates with irresistible panache. And the fun being had on stage spreads over the footlights.

Richard Burkhard is a dapper Papageno, all the more charming for not being too cuddly and definitely the star of the show. But Nicky Spence sings sweetly and musically as a gentlemanly Tamino, and Mari Moriya nails the Queen of the Night’s coloratura with pin-point accuracy.

I was marginally less engaged by Laura Mitchell’s rather hard-edged, unmelting Pamina and Jonathan Best’s inscrutable and vocally lacklustre Sarastro, but further down, the cast sounded first-rate: Peter van Hulle, playing Monostatos as a dastardly Regency Sir Jasper, Ruth Jenkins as a perky Papagena, and rich-voiced trios of Ladies and Boys. A chorus assembled ad hoc sounded lovely, too.

With Ekhart Wycik leading the orchestra in a spry and lithe account of the score, the show is a winner – just the sort of thing Scottish Opera should be doing to rebuild its public and its identity.

Until Oct 27, then touring to Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh and Belfast. Box office (Glasgow): 0844 871 7627