The Magic Flute, ENO, review

After an embarrassing run of disasters and mediocrities, English National Opera badly needs a hit. Its new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, imported from Amsterdam, is exuberantly conducted, generally well sung and inventively staged. Whether it will embed itself in the public’s affections is another matter.

Simon McBurney’s interpretation bears all the hallmarks of his work with Complicite. The stage is dominated by a mobile platform, animated by silent supernumeraries dressed in black who manipulate the props, operate the machinery and frolic about as Papageno’s birds.

The atmosphere is darkly industrial: McBurney avoids the work’s innocent pantomime charm, and plumps for modern grunge instead. Sarastro - a Southern States revivalist preacher? - appears to lead a business corporation of a cult every bit as nasty as anything represented by the Queen of the Night, a crone in a bath chair.

Prince Tamino runs around in a track suit, Papageno is a painter and decorator. Video does the work of backcloths, and audience and orchestra are involved in the action. I couldn’t see that it added up to much, but then the original concept isn’t intellectually coherent anyway. There are some clever effects and some good jokes along the way: it’s not pretty, but it’s not boring either.

I’m sufficiently old-fashioned to feel that all is not well if an organisation calling itself English National Opera fields a Hungarian conductor and Americans for two of the leading roles. The conductor Gergely Madaras was terrific, I admit - energizing an orchestra in a raised pit - and there aren’t many British basses around who can sing Sarastro as sonorously as the reliable James Creswell. But although Devon Guthrie sang Pamina firmly, it was galling to see our very own and utterly delightful Mary Bevan simultaneously under-challenged by the teeny role of Papagena.

A German Queen of the Night, Cornelia Götz, nailed her arias efficiently, as well she might, having sung them over 800 times on stage. Roland Wood made a lugubrious but engaging Papageno, hailing from the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire, and Ben Johnson sang a dignified account of Tamino’s portrait aria. The three ladies were excellent, in ENO’s best traditions, and Stephen Jeffreys’ translation was nicely idiomatic.

ENO’s previous production of this opera, directed by Nicholas Hytner, delighted family audiences and came up fresh for over 20 years. This one will do for now, but I doubt its comparable longevity.

Until 7 December. Tickets: 020 7845 9300; (www.eno.org)