Salzburg Magic Flute Sat Oct 6th

[DracoM]

Can anyone help?

[a] followed much with Dent score, but many of the vocal lines on air had all manner of different / dotted rhythms a-plenty - is there a wholly updated / re-researched edition that Maestro Harnoncourt uses?

[b] Has anyone seen the production? Saw the BBC homepage pix, but...........fantastically noisy rumblings etc and I could only think it was scenery / revolves moving or what?

[c] it seemed a very solemn even menacingly Gothic production. The dialogue was very, very unfunny, hardly a ripple from the audience, and applause after some of the set piece arias was feeble and unenthusiastic. It all had a very odd feel to it.

[d] did others feel that the Queen of the Night sounded totally out of her depth [height?] and was pretty poor. Good Tamino, good Pamina, dull Papageno/a, Monostatos just plain silly. BUT terrific orchestra, much enjoyed.

[David-G]

I listened to this and enjoyed it very much, particularly the orchestra. I can't unfortunately help with (a) or (b). I thought the singers in general were good. I thought the Queen of the Night had a nice voice and coped acceptably with the coloratura. But her coloratura lacked power and fire, which are necessary if the Queen of the Night is to carry conviction. The apparent lack of audience involvement may be more a criticism of the Salzburg audience than of the performance. They may have been like the audience at La Fenice when I saw Traetta's "Buova d'Antona" there years ago. There was some comic business with characters pretending to be a horse, which would have had an English audience in stitches. The La Fenice audience sat silent and po-faced.

There seemed to be a problem with the microphone arrangement for the chorus. They were completely drowned by the orchestra, which made the climaxes of the acts something of a disappointment.

Some of the tempi seemed strange. The overture was brisk; but the Papageno-Pamina duet "Bei Männern" was deathly slow. However later, Pamina's great aria was taken at a pace which would have suited Norrington.

It seemed to me that Harnoncourt was inserting very slight pauses into the flow of the music, for emphasis. At first I rather liked this, it seemed refreshing, and concentrated the mind on the meanings of the phrases. However he seemed to do this to excess, and I rapidly tired of it.

But overall the opera was very enjoyable; and if anyone is contemplating listening on the i-player, I can recommend it.

[Bert Coules]

...the Papageno-Pamina duet "Bei Männern" was deathly slow.

Wasn't it just? And not just slow but lifeless: no fun, no sparkle at all. I turned on the broadcast just before that point and didn't overly regret having missed the preceding action. And then on came Tamino, shouting for dramatic emphasis; I'm afraid I gave up.

Bert

[rodney_h_d]

.....It seemed to me that Harnoncourt was inserting very slight pauses into the flow of the music, for emphasis. At first I rather liked this, it seemed refreshing, and concentrated the mind on the meanings of the phrases. However he seemed to do this to excess, and I rapidly tired of it.....

Unfortunately that's what Harnoncourt tends to do, at least in music of the classical period. You can often spot it even when you turn the radio on and don't know who's conducting.

A couple of examples I recall from separate occasions were Mozart's Prague Symphony and his Serenata Notturna K239 where I thought that it must be Harnoncourt and it was. I also remember turning off a recording of a live performance of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with P-L Aimard one Sunday morning and going out for a walk because I couldn't take any more! This was apparently one of several performances from which their recording was 'constructed'. I haven't heard the finished article.

[David-G]

Thank you Bert and Rodney for your interesting comments.