✭✭✭✭✭

by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,

directed by Marshall Pynkoski

Opera Atelier, Elgin Theatre, Toronto

November 17-26, 2006

Opera Atelier’s revival of its acclaimed 2001 production of The Magic Flute is a major success.  The production is generally even better sung than before and, essential for a work with so much spoken dialogue, features acting equal with the best in theatre.  This makes the show not merely a constant pleasure for opera lovers but an ideal first opera for newcomers.

Among a very strong cast Colin Ainsworth not only looks the part of the handsome young prince Tamino, but has beautifully clear, strong and expressive voice to match.  As his peculiar travelling companion, the bird-seller Papageno, Olivier Laquerre is both falling-down funny and commands a lush baritone voice.  In every scene Laquerre, complete with birdlike gestures, seems to discover new comic aspects of this man of nature who has little regard for Tamino’s “higher” ideals.  Among the women Peggy Kriha Dye is a lovely Pamina with an unusually rich soprano.  Penelope Randall-Davis, as her malevolent mother, the Queen of the Night, drew storms of applause for tossing off Mozart’s hair-raising coloratura passages as if they were nothing, even taking on the optional ultra-stratospheric high notes with ease.  A production so imaginative as this, so filled with beauty, humour and grandeur, is one to seek out and to cherish. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-11-23.

Photo: Penelope Randall-Davis as the Queen of the Night. ©Bruce Zinger.