On Friday, February 1st I had the privilege of watching UBC Opera’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) at the Chan Centre for Performing Arts. It was my first time watching an Opera and it was certainly a memorable experience. After learning about the Three Act Structure of Opera Seria and having no prior exposure to Operatic music, I showed up expecting a Three Act Structure and was quite surprised to see that the first page of the program stated that this was an Opera in two acts. The specific structure is called a Singspiel and content alternates between spoken prose and singing that can be heard throughout the Opera.
The opera opens with an overture played by the orchestra and transitions seamlessly into the first aria of the Opera sung by a Tenor. This mirrors the typical Opera structure we learned about in class, specifically how most operas open with an Instrumental overture that serves as an introduction and usually helps introduce the next excerpt in the work, as we discovered in our in-class analysis of Dido and Aeneas (Overture, followed by Wayward Sisters). Another familiar element that I recall was spoken about in class was the fact that women who appear in threes are never a good sign in Operas, which made me more alert to the Three Ladies and the Three Spirits. Overall the performances were incredibly impressive but I have to admit it was hard to focus on engaging meaningfully with the music when the text was sung in German and I was mostly busy trying to understand the plot by reading the English surtitles provided, which allowed me to understand what was happening plot-wise but made it hard to take notes of the specific details of some of the pieces.
My favourite piece from the performance has to be the iconic aria “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen”. I didn’t recognize the piece at first but later in the aria actually began to realize that this was a piece that I already knew, which made me excited and made it easier to pay close attention to the specific musical details that were happening. This aria is impressive, to say the least, and it was interesting to just have heard the piece in passing and compare it to an active performance of it. The soprano who portrays the Queen of the Night hits all the notes flawlessly and effortlessly, and executes my personal favourite part: the part where the words end and the soprano sings the short notes at an incredibly high pitch. Listening to the piece in context, I was able to see how the plot was made significant through the compositional choices that Mozart made. Those short, piercing high notes are sung like the Queen of The Night is painting an image of stabbing Sarastro by hitting him with these incredibly precise repeated high notes (executed perfectly by the Soprano.) Another thing that I found fascinating about this aria is the interaction between the orchestra and the Queen of the Night, in particular, the use of a lot of imitations in some parts and how sometimes they even echo each other exactly.
Overall, UBC Opera’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute was a great First Opera to attend. The students put on incredible performances and it was impressive to see how much talent UBC has and how capable they were of putting on such an amazing production.