{TABLE} The Magic Flute ..... Mozart {/TABLE} THE new ESB sponsored touring Magic Flute from Opera Theatre Company is described as "a version for adults and children". The first performance, which was given in Athlone last night, had a high proportion of schoolgoers in the audience, and their cheering at the end of the evening's entertainment was loud if not particularly long.
The production is colourful (designed by Joanna Taylor, lit by Paul Tucker), with a magic cabinet of a set which might open at any point to reveal something unexpected. Along the way there are a few touches which are genuinely fantastical, the monster striped spider of Act II, for instance, and a collection of exotic birds in Act I.
There's never any doubt that this show is controlled by Gerard O'Connor's Sarastro. He sits imperiously atop a tall blue pedestal as if to prove it. And Margaret Preece's Queen of the Night is clearly no worthy competitor. Her flouncing has too much of cliche about it, her singing too many reminders of the dangers inherent in hopping about at the top of the soprano register.
As the young lovers, neither Declan Kelly (Tamino) nor Fionnuala Gill (Pamina) won my sympathy. Kelly shows an unwelcome tendency to stay under the note (he is altogether more effective as the dread locked baddie, Monostatos), and, in spite of some effective moments, there is a recurrent thinness to Gill's tone.
The Papagena as old woman of Colette McGahon provides some of the sharpest comedy (though vocally she is not always as successfully to the point) and the Papageno of Tom Guthrie has a certain common touch appeal.
Susie Kennedy's direction only intermittently takes flight, the major obstacle here, I suspect, being the retention of altogether too much formality in the text (the production uses Andrew Porter's translation).
The thankless task of shrinking the music to fit a quintet of flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano fell to the conductor, Andrew Synnott. In the swimmy acoustic of the RTC Hall in Athlone, he didn't always manage to keep a tight rein on things, though the ensemble can be expected to improve as the tour progresses.
