Here, she’s a spider dwarfed by her own towering legs and stranded atop them-a tiny, singing head in a cocoon-like body perched high above the action. This is especially the fate of the traditionally mighty Queen of the Night (soprano Lila Dufy).
Lyric’s youthful cast is trapped by the concept, which dictates every melodramatic move and pins them to precise, often awkward positions on stage. There is sound, of course, but-the creators’ stated intentions notwithstanding-it’s secondary to the visual effects. In a poignant moment for an audience sitting behind several thousand masks, Papageno’s chattering mouth literally flies away from him. The animation, by Paul Barritt (Andrade’s co-artistic director at the London theater company 1927), is continuously engaging, full of wry surprises that amplify and comment on the story of Prince Tamino (tenor Pavel Petrov) and his sidekick, the bird-catcher Papageno (baritone Huw Montague Rendall), as they endure a series of trials in order to gain enlightenment and rescue a princess.Īnd the painstaking integration of live performers with Barritt’s cartoon world is a choreographic wonder: the singers kick aside inky attacking spiders, hover in the night sky on sketchy wings, and clutch the leashes of straining animated devil dogs. See the performer and artist lineup here » Close
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