Perth Festival: The Magic Flute
Perth Theatre, 22/05/24
Scots Opera Project Community Chorus, Gordon Cree (music director, piano)
The Scots Opera Project’s new Scots language adaptation of Mozart’s opera, ‘The Magic Flute’, received the first of two Perth Festival outings on the night of Wednesday 22nd May, in the Main Auditorium of Perth Theatre. Mozart’s orchestral scoring was rendered in an arrangement for flute/piccolo, string quartet and piano by all-round musical wizard Gordon Cree, who was Music Director of the production and played the piano in the pit throughout. Tenor David Douglas, who played Tamino, also produced and directed. Perth native and on the board of the Festival, coloratura soprano Colleen Nicoll, who played the Queen of the Night, was also Chorus Director, while her husband Andrew Johnston coached and accompanied the chorus in rehearsals. Indeed, supremely-talented married couples seemed to be a feature of the production. Creative stars of Opera Bohemia and numerous other projects, soprano Catriona Clark and baritone Douglas Nairne, played Pamina and Papageno respectively, while Gordon Cree’s wife, mezzo Cheryl Forbes, played Second Lady. First Lady, soprano Rachael Brimley, also played Papagena.
The re-imagined setting for this surreal musical drama is an asylum. The Queen of the Night and Sarastro (bass Michael Cameron-Longden) are chief psychiatrists in two contrasting units of the asylum, the former dark, oppressive and obsessed with containment and control, the latter (as we discover) humane and enlightened, focusses on helping and treating the patients. Tamino, tormented by voices in his head (rather than a serpent) finds himself incarcerated in the Queen’s ward at the mercy of the Three Ladies (dodgy psychiatric nurses), who sedate him and ‘admire’ his physique (in a rather tactile fashion). Happy-go-lucky Pest Control worker Papageno befriends him. When the Queen discovers that Pamina, a patient under her domineering control, has been moved to Sarastro’s unit, and that Tamino is enchanted by her picture, she tasks Tamino and Papageno with locating her and snatching her back, endowing them with a magic flute and bells. Their quest, though they have different outlooks on life and become separated, leads them through trials and tribulations to self-realisation and fulfilment, Tamino through the enlightened therapy of Sarastro and the love of Pamina, Papageno through eventually finding his true love, the dishy Pest Control operative Papagena. In this production, Monostatos, from whose captivity Papageno hilariously rescues Pamina in a laundry basket on wheels, is played as the alter ego of the split-personality Third Lady (nurse) by Austrian mezzo Ulrike Wutscher. Sarastro’s ‘priests’ are his medical orderlies, played by tenor John Luke and bass David Thomson.
The chorus, as assorted inmates of the asylum, were musically satisfying with Mozart’s gorgeous melodies and dramatically convincing as sufferers from various neurological and mental disorders; no less than they had been last year, as the islanders in Granville Bantock’s ‘The Seal Woman’. They were a credit to Colleen and Andy and to themselves.
David Douglas delivered a sterling performance as the troubled Tamino, crying desperately for help where there will be none, yet instinctively drawn to the sources of his recovery, Pamina’s love and Sarastro’s kindness. Mozart’s generosity with great tenor arias was handsomely repaid. And, amazingly, he actually played the flute.
Catriona Clark, whose Susanna and Cio-Cio-San for Opera Bohemia I have enjoyed and praised, brought a Pamina that was vulnerable and suggestible, but with reserves of inner strength. Her duets with Papageno, Tamino and the Queen were delicious, but my abiding memory of the night was her aria at the end of Act 2, Part One, when Tamino, warned off distractions while undergoing treatment, ignores her, and she sang of the pain of feeling forsaken (“Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden” in the original). It was breathtakingly beautiful and raised a tear or two.
Douglas Nairne was a charismatic and uncomplicated, yet courageous, Papageno, the only gap in his life “unless A can hae me a wifie, A’m wabbid”. The Act 2 duet with Papageno ‘Pa, pa, pa’ was as delightful as ever, but his duet with the rescued Pamina (in a laundry basket), assuring her of Tamino’s devotion, will remain an abiding memory of a combination of delicious Mozart melody and pure comedy gold. Older members of my choir, Clackmannanshire Choral Society, still fondly remember Douglas, newly graduated from the (then) RSAMD, guesting at our 2006 Christmas Concert accompanied by Laura Baxter.
The Queen of the Night is always something of a dragon, but Colleen Nicoll added an extra dimension as “the boss from hell”. Mozart gives her two super contrasting arias, ‘O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn’ in Act 1 (fake concern to bend Tamino to her nefarious will) and ‘Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen’ in Act 2, usually called the ‘Rage Aria’. Both demand phenomenal tonal range across the tessitura, but with very different expression. This they received in spades. Absolutely superb. Dramatically, threatening the vulnerable Pamina with a knife to persuade her to murder Sarastro was thrillingly melodramatic. Fabulous performance.
Mozart’s music is always going to be the star of this singspiel, and of course it was, but unfortunately the highest quality of bel canto can obscure the words, especially in the arias of the female principals (and especially, I would argue, in Germanic languages). Thus, although what I could hear of the Scots text was utterly delightful, I missed a lot of it and would have appreciated surtitles with the actual Scots. It was still a superb production and an unforgettable start to this year’s Perth Festival of the Arts. Full marks from me.
Photo Credit: Fraser Band