The Magic Flute gives us a multi-character coming-of-age story, turns clear-cut notions of good and evil on their heads, and imagines an entitled, male-dominated world becoming more enlightened in its gradual embrace of the feminine. In this production, I wanted to explore how these themes played out both in the18th-century and in our contemporary world.
I asked myself these questions. What if Tamino, a bored and restless 18th-century prince who takes his wife Pamina and their three children pretty much for granted were to be catapulted into modernAmerica? What if he were faced with his own foibles and actions writ large: a men’s club corporate world of mysterious doings and enormous power, a coterie of “desperate housewives” who feel disempowered by being left at home and decide to take matters into their own hands, a group of children mature beyond their years who offer guidance that can be accepted or rejected at one’s own peril?
Tamino, in this world, finds he has to win Pamina all over again with a fresh courtship and that he has to face a set of emotionally challenging trials. Those trials of fire and water have always seemed to me to be much more about the life-and-death emotional struggles a couple goes through than about literal fire and water. And the love between Tamino and Pamina has a ripple effect on the world around them, as the male power-brokers in Sarastro’s organization reunite with their estranged spouses and try to repair their dysfunctional marriages. I like to imagine Sarastro and the Queen as a divorced couple, battling for control over their daughter Pamina – and in a contemporary world, the Queen would sue Sarastro over the way he stripped power from her.
In our production, the action takes place as if in a dream, where things aren’t always what they seem, and fantastical elements crop up without warning – not a bad description of Mozart’s original work, in fact. Tamino, then, is the dreamer, observing not only the scenes where he’s an active participant, but those involving the other characters whose personal struggles instruct him. Finally, as in “A Christmas Carol” or “It’s a Wonderful Life “, he returns to his 18th-century life a changed, more enlightened, and more appreciative man. – Joe Banno