On Friday night in rainy day of the first day of February, I went to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in UBC. I have seen other opera pieces on YouTube in parts, but this was my first ever experience of watching whole opera in person, so I had colossal expectation of how music would be played along with the stage performance.
“Die Zauberflote” or “Magic Flute” in English form is one of the last pieces done by Mozart. And it is also known as the complete version of his comprehensive music in those days. In the writings of the brochure in the hall corridor, the work was introduced as a typical Singspiel opera. Later, I found out it is often misidentified as Singspiel, but it is rather a unique form of opera that combines various musical styles such as opera buffa, opera seria, German lied, Bach’s coral, and Austrian folk music.
I was waiting in the dark for the opera to begin, watching the set on stage for a while. The set of opera was very engrossing. Unlike other orchestral stage such as VSO, there was a wide range of stage for actors and the hollowed-out space for orchestral players called ‘orchestra pit’. After the short amount of time had passed, the lights were on the stage and the music began. It turned out from here that my experience of watching opera is so humble. I didn’t know there was an overture to the opera, so I was quite embarrassed when the songs and actors didn’t show up for a long time after the gentle music with slow tempo being played from the orchestra pit.
The atmosphere of the stage changed instantly after the overture. Prince Tamino appeared on the stage with giant serpent. It was a scene where a prince was chased by a serpent and three ladies appeared to save the prince. While the opera was being conducted in German, English subtitles appeared on the screen located on the ceiling of the stage. It was a little cumbersome to look at both the stage and the screen alternately, but I also thought it was a way to enjoy opera.
And then there was a scene where a character called bird catcher Papageno came out and sang merrily with a bird cage, it was one of the most impressive performances to me. I had thought that every piece of classical music from the era of Mozart was serious and formal, but I realized it was a big bias. Papageno’s aria “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja” was a fun and joyful melody like dancing in the beautiful forest, and the lyrics were also humorous. The scenes that followed also had humorous codes in between and I felt like Mozart intended to make the audience laugh at ease while watching his piece. Especially in most of the scenes where Papageno appeared, there were many factors that the audience laughed, so I really wondered about the intention of Mozart to create this character.
In the latter half of the first act, aria of Prince Tamino and aria of the Queen of the Night were also memorable scenes. Tamino’s aria was full of lyricism. It was elegant and beautiful, even though it was a tenor singing. The Queen’s aria was also magnificent. There was a queenly elegance in the melody with a dark, sad vibe in the beginning. The very high-toned coloratura that followed was even more spectacular. It was an incredible technique to believe that the soprano was a college student. The witty and joyful melody of the song in which the princess Pamina and Papageno drove out the villain of this piece, Monostatos and his men with silver bell was also indelible.
As the opera progressed, several reversals arose. It was since the appearance of Sarastro, the evil man as the Queen of the Night called. Sarastro’s grand and massive bass along with the hymn-like melody was such that I could feel that he was a deified character in the work. In contrast, the appearance of the Queen re-emerging at the end of the play was also in opposite as she started her aria. An aria of the Queen of the Night “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” is probably the most famous aria that even people who do not know much about opera and classical music would recognize. The elegance that was seen in her before was like the wind that vanished without trace, and what lay in place was an eerie rage of sharpness and malice. Especially, the ascension in the arid was a good tool to reveal the true image of the Queen.
There are many operas in the world. It was quite an interesting experience that this work, which is reputed to be the most unique opera, became my first opera experience. After I saw this piece of work made by combining different colors of style rather than one genre and style, I felt like I watched several works at once.