Seattle Opera Weblog: A Magical Storybook

How did you provide you with the thought of staging The Magic
Flute with 1927?

Barrie Kosky (Creative Director, Komische Oper Berlin):
Greater than a decade in the past, I attended a efficiency of Between the Satan and
the Deep Blue Sea, the primary present created by the British theater firm
generally known as 1927. From the second the present began, there was this fascinating combine
of dwell efficiency with animation creating its personal aesthetic world. Inside
minutes, this unusual combination of silent movie and music corridor had satisfied me
that these folks needed to do The Magic Flute with me in Berlin!

The end result was a novel Magic Flute. Though Suzanne
and Paul had been working in Berlin for the primary time, they’d a pure really feel for
town’s creative ambiance, particularly the Berlin of the Nineteen Twenties, when it was
such an vital inventive heart for portray, cabaret, silent movie, and animated
movie. Suzanne, Paul, and I share a love for revue, vaudeville, music corridor, and
comparable types of theater, and, in fact, for silent movie. So, Papageno is
suggestive of Buster Keaton, Monostatos is a bit Nosferatu, and Pamina maybe
a bit paying homage to Louise Brooks. However it’s greater than an homage to silent
movie—there are far too many influences from different areas.

Is your love for silent movie the motivation behind the
identify “1927”?

Suzanne Andrade (co-creator of 1927): 1927 was the
yr of the primary sound movie. The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson was an
absolute sensation on the time. We work with a combination of dwell efficiency and
animation, which makes it a totally new artwork type in some ways. Many others
have used movie in theater, however 1927 integrates movie in a really new means. We don’t
do a theater piece with added motion pictures. Nor will we make a film after which mix
it with appearing components. Every thing goes hand in hand. Our exhibits evoke the world
of desires and nightmares, with aesthetics that hearken again to the world of
silent movie.

Paul Barritt (co-creator of 1927): And but it could
be mistaken to see in our work solely the affect of the Nineteen Twenties and silent movie. We
take our visible inspiration from many eras, from the copper engravings of the
18th century in addition to in comics of right this moment. There isn’t any preconceived aesthetic
setting in our thoughts once we work on a present. The vital factor is that the
picture suits. A superb instance is Papageno’s aria “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” [“A
Girl or a Little Wife”]. Within the libretto, he’s served a glass of wine within the
dialogue earlier than his aria. We let him have a drink, but it surely isn’t wine. It’s a
pink cocktail from a large cocktail glass, and Suzanne had the concept he
would begin to see pink elephants flying round him. In fact, essentially the most well-known
of all flying elephants was Dumbo—from the Forties—however the precise yr isn’t
vital so long as the whole lot comes collectively visually.

Suzanne Andrade: Our Magic Flute is a journey
by totally different worlds of fantasy. However as in all of our exhibits, there’s a
connecting model that ensures that the entire thing doesn’t collapse
aesthetically.

Barrie Kosky: That is additionally helped by 1927’s very
particular feeling for rhythm. The rhythm of the music and the textual content has an
monumental affect on the animation. As we labored collectively on The Magic
Flute, the timing at all times got here from the music, even—particularly—within the
dialogues, which we condensed and remodeled into silent movie intertitles with
piano accompaniment. Nonetheless, we use an 18th-century fortepiano, and the
accompanying music is by Mozart. This not solely provides the entire piece a
constant model, but in addition a constant rhythm. It’s a silent movie by Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, so to talk!

© Jaro Suffner

Does this piece work with out the dialogue?

Suzanne Andrade: I believe that just about any story may be
informed with out phrases. You’ll be able to undress a narrative to the bone, to search out out what you
actually need to convey the plot. We tried to do this in The Magic Flute.
You’ll be able to convey a lot of a narrative by purely visible means. You don’t at all times
want two pages of dialogue to indicate the connection between two folks. You
don’t want a comic book dialogue to indicate that Papageno is a humorous character. A
intelligent gimmick can typically provide extra perception than dialogue.

Paul Barritt: Going again to silent movies, for a
second—they weren’t simply movies with out sound, with intertitles instead of the
lacking voices. Intertitles had been truly used very sparingly. The makers of
silent movies as a substitute informed their tales by the visible components. Silent
movies informed their story by gestures, actions, and glances, and so forth.

Barrie Kosky: This emphasis on the photographs makes it
potential for each viewer to expertise the present in his or her personal means: as a
magical, residing storybook; as a curious, modern meditation on silent movie
as a singing silent movie; or as work come to life. Principally, we now have a
hundred stage units through which issues occur that usually aren’t potential
onstage: flying elephants, flutes trailing notes, bells as showgirls… We are able to
fly as much as the celebs after which journey an elevator to hell, all inside a couple of minutes.
Along with all of the animation in our manufacturing, there are additionally moments when
the singers are in a easy white highlight. Instantly there’s solely the music,
the textual content, and the character. The very simplicity makes these maybe essentially the most
touching moments of the night. Through the efficiency, the expertise doesn’t
play within the foreground. Though Paul spent hours and hours sitting in entrance of
laptop to create it, his animation by no means loses its deeply human element.
You’ll be able to at all times see {that a} human hand has drawn the whole lot. Video projections as
a part of theatrical productions aren’t new. However they usually grow to be boring after a
couple of minutes, as a result of there isn’t any interplay between the two-dimensional
house of the display and the three dimensions of the actors. Suzanne and Paul
have solved this drawback by combining all of those dimensions into a standard
theatrical language.

What does The Magic Flute actually imply?

Paul Barritt: It’s a love story, informed as a fairy
story.

Suzanne Andrade: The love story between Tamino and
Pamina. All through all the piece, the 2 attempt to discover one another—however
everybody else separates them and pulls them away from one another. Solely on the
very finish do they arrive collectively.

Barrie Kosky: A wierd, fairytale love story, one
that has quite a lot of archetypal and mythological components, such because the trials they
should endure to realize knowledge. They should undergo fireplace and water to mature.
These are historic rites of initiation.

Tamino falls in love with a portrait. What number of myths and
fairy tales embody this plot level? The hero falls in love with an image and
goes searching for the topic. And on his option to her, he encounters all types
of obstacles. And, on the identical time, the item of his want faces her personal
private obstacles on her personal journey.

You’ll be able to expertise our manufacturing as a journey by the
dream worlds of Tamino and Pamina. These two dream worlds collide and mix
to type one unusual dream. The one that combines these desires and these
worlds is Papageno. We’re very targeted on these three characters.
Curiously, Papageno is in pursuit of an idealized picture too: the proper
fantasy girl at his facet, one thing he craves nearly desperately.

Printed with permission from LA Opera.