Silliness Wins the Heart in Chautauqua Opera's 'Magic Flute'

Published in The Chautauquan Daily, Chautauqua NY
August 3, 2011
By Anthony Brannon, guest reviewer

For original online article click HERE

A survival score for The Magic Flute:

• Slog through the arch nobility.
• Struggle through yet another rescue story.
• Endure the misogyny.
• Enjoy the stagecraft and the immortal music, and know that it is silliness that wins the heart in this fairy tale.

The birdman, a baritone who sprouts feathers and lives with birds and has a smile and a manner to light up the night, captures the hour.

Kyle Pfortmiller hasn’t been here before. You may not have heard of him. But if you didn’t meet him in Norton Hall the other day, you missed the flight. He was Papageno, the odd duck in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and he won the audience with the truth of his performance.

There’s a good bit of talk and song about Truth and Reason and Wisdom in The Magic Flute. More than three centuries old now, the opera proposes we should care more about enlightened strivers than some ordinary guy. Those strivers are the people who never are content. They see death lurking behind every tree, and they require fancy temples and rituals and a magic flute to find their way between Good and Evil. These are the people in countless stories who get captured or put in a spell and require someone to come along and rescue them.

Typically, it is a woman who summons help from a man…

I preferred the strange birdman. What a shame if you missed the birdman.

Now it is true that Artistic/General Director Jay Lesenger does what he can on behalf of Pfortmiller, who portrays the birdman called Papageno; Lesenger takes Papageno charmingly out of role every so often — to accept a glass of wine from the orchestra pit, for instance, and chat with the audience from the aisle during this fine and eminently singable English translation of the 1791 Vienna production.

Lesenger also brought many of the costumes into the 20th and 21st centuries within a set by Steven Capone that works a clever variation on the Masonic compass and square. All this is true. But even so, the evening belongs to Pfortmiller on pure performance merits.

Papageno’s pleasures are the simple ones, and Pfortmiller has the body of a mime and the voice of a charm to keep his role, which can be flamboyant, under just the right control. His Pagageno is a happy-go-lucky bird catcher who keeps a crazy Queen of the Night stocked with songbirds. He happens to fall into the middle of an ancient narrative about princes and imprisoned princesses, and so off he goes into a pre-enlightenment maelstrom about Freemasonic values and the valor that is supposed to accompany such high mindedness.

Mozart must have favored Papageno, too, for he wrote for Papageno his own happy flute passage that signals his presence — and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder, too, for he insisted on playing the role himself and gave Papageno a happy sounding name (likely from Italian words for Parrot and wise) — and an everyman desire for everywoman and lots of kids and a healthy desire for good food and drink.

Papageno takes these simple pleasures and masters several basic fears. That is all Pfortmiller needed to work with, because he sings so well and so happily, and he plays the details in his character such that he is never off.

Oh, the Queen of the Night — Brittany Robinson, a truly impressive Chautauqua Opera Young Artist — commanded respect, too. Her range for this part, one of the most demanding for a dramatic coloratura soprano, is impressive, and Robinson created a presence befitting the thunder, lightning and disco lighting that accompanied her most every place she went on stage.

It is her daughter who has fallen upon hard times and is imprisoned by a priest who has a politburo of lackeys and slaves and who seems to double as a Freemason. Their language about women drew gasps from a 21st-century audience, and the engine of the opera, when you think about it, ought to have its carbs cleaned, or mouth washed — to mix metaphors in hopes of making the point.

The head priest, Sarastro (Harold Wilson) has a bass voice as reaching as the Queen, which is only fitting, since they are enemies. The Queen’s daughter (Deborah Selig) comes out of “Mad Men” and awaits rescue from the wandering prince, Vale Rideout, a veteran now as a former Young Artist who Chautauquans enjoyed most recently in “The Pirates of Penzance.”

The rescue of the princess requires a magic flute, some magic bells and a heavy dose of righteous talk and song at the hands of the priests, posing as Masons in Mad Men garb performing an initiation. Others get into the act — some teammates for the Queen of the Night, in particular three ladies of sufficient moment. The drama also counts on three child sprites, who dress as if they are from a 1940s boarding school, and some other children who portray assorted animals. It is very charming and makes for an effective chorus.

A wife for Papageno makes a late and welcome entry. Earlier, she had been an old hag, just to test the nerves, and she was terrific, played by Kelsey Betzelberger. Michael Desnoyers, also a returning Young Artist, had another character role as Sarastro’s head servant, and he was great, too. Great costumes by B. G. Fitzgerald and Darcy Hofer helped the effect that Lesenger sought: Nothing short of full engagement. The stagecraft was engaging and creative and gave up nothing to the excellence of voice.

There is a good bit of debate about what possessed Mozart to go along with the modest plotline and the Masonic propaganda, but there is little debate about the wonderful romantic auger this opera affords for the next century, so that we, in the 21st, can take our liberties with music.

It was a wonderful, happy evening, “cheerful, gay and free,” as Papageno intoned. And so many of the solos, and special duets, are memorable in the literature.

Just one argument: Why was this only programmed for two performances? Both were sold out and hugely appreciated.

Anthony Bannon is the Ron and Donna Fielding Director at George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and a former arts writer for The Buffalo News.