★★★★☆
Mozart is a problem for the Me Too era. In Don Giovanni, women fall over themselves to be seduced by a serial abuser. In Così fan tutte, it’s the sisters who are deemed to be “all like that”, even though both sexes cheat. And in The Magic Flute, Sarastro’s all-male cult triumphs with its view that “a man must guide a woman’s destiny” — a line that, as at Garsington this week, now provokes gasps.
Netia Jones, the director of Garsington’s new production, finesses the problem ingeniously. Sarastro’s followers are absurdly pompous freemasons whose rites — bare chests, aprons, rolled-up trouser legs and all — are depicted in such detail that one suspects Jones has been infiltrating her local lodge. And