The Magic Flute at Severance

 It has become a tradition for the Cleveland Orchestra to present an opera at the end of each season.  I’ve been lucky to see Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande, both inventively staged, at Severance.  To cap off this season, the orchestra is presenting Mozart’s The Magic Flute – his last opera.

The libretto for The Magic Flute draws on Enlightenment ideas that were blossoming in Europe and the young United States during that era, in particular the ability to overcome human darkness and superstition with the power of reason and love.  This is certainly a welcome message for our time, not merely in the United States, but in much of the world torn by religious, ethnic, and political strife.  This philosophy’s incorporation in The Magic Flute stemmed from Mozart’s status, as well as that of his librettist Emanuel Schikaneder, as Freemasons.  The darkness vs. light theme is demonstrated in the opera mostly via the two characters who act as “puppet-masters” over the others: The Queen of the Night and Sarastro – bitter enemies.  Sarastro is initially presented as the villain, but later shown to be a stern, yet wise and just leader who tests several characters to judge their worthiness.  Sarastro is the epitome of tough-love.  

Our orchestra’s home is not the largest facility.  The hall only seats about 2,200 and is more intimate than, say, Carnegie Hall or Boston’s Symphony Hall – to say nothing of a full-scale opera house.  Yet art sometimes thrives on limitations.  This production was staged with unobtrusive inventiveness; lighting effects were used where one would usually see solid sets.  Several characters made their entrances from the back of the hall.  Both The Queen of the Night and Sarastro were presented with giant puppets placed near the singers, with the Sarastro puppet being confined to a wheelchair.  The costuming was more straightforward, with most characters in formal clothes and the three spirits, amusingly, dressed as waiters. 

As for the singing itself, every performance was on a high level, but it was Kathryn Lewek’s Queen of the Night who stole the show in the well-known "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" ("Hell's vengeance boils in my heart") – she nailed every treacherous high note with more than precision, but also with musicality. 

As the stage at Severance was fully utilized for the theatrics, the orchestra, with forces appropriately reduced, was placed directly in front of the stage, where the first several seat rows usually are.  Music Director Franz Welser-Möst drew an almost chamber-like sound from the orchestra, his pacing was ideal.  When everything was put together, this was undoubtedly the climax of the orchestra’s 2023-2024 season.  There were numerous bursts of applause after various arias, and the ovation at the opera’s conclusion was among the most sustained this listener has ever witnessed.

233 years after it was premiered, The Magic Flute’s Humanistic message shines through like bright sunlight banishing the darkness.  

A well deserved ovation