The Magic Flute at the Hollywood Bowl

(Isabel Bayrakdarian as Pamina and Hugh Russell as Papageno on the big screen.)

Summer in LA is considerably sweetened by concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. Well OK, so having the beach really close by is another great thing, but the LA Phil doesn't play on the beach. I realize that I'm in the minority thinking that the main attraction is the classical concerts (they're traditionally the most undersold - but in an amphitheatre of 18,000 seats, being only 50% capacity for a Tuesday night classical concert and calling it "undersold" is relative). It's just so nice to hear a grand symphony sitting in the warm air and looking up at the star lit sky.

On Sunday night, I jump started my Bowl season with a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute, with Leonard Slatkin conducting the LA Phil. Sumi Jo sang the Queen of the Night with Isabel Bayrakdarian as Pamina, Eric Cutler as Pamino and Hugh Russell as Papageno. Alfred Molina narrated in between songs. The Bowl stages a concert production of an opera every summer, and since I've been getting into opera lately and I'm most familiar with The Magic Flute, this was a perfect way to start my Bowl season.

The highlight was the exceptionally lush, warm sound of the orchestra under Slatkin's baton. And a great technical plus- they must have found the ideal balance for the Hollywood Bowl's sound system finally because orchestral music now sounds wonderful coming out of those speakers! In the last two seasons since they renovated the Bowl it has tended to sound more like a dampened wall of sound that I the listener had to adjust to; on Sunday, I found that it the sound was bright and lovely from the beginning. Now there's even more of a reason to keep going to the Bowl for the LA Phil all summer long.

(Eric Cutler as Pamino, on the big screen.)

Singer-wise, things were mostly great. Isabelle Bayrakdarian was particularly impressive as Pamina, and Hugh Russell as Papageno was a delight with his comic facial expressions and show stealing humor (Papageno always seems to steal the show - Nathan Gunn did the same the last time I saw Flute, during the Met broadcast in December). Eric Cutler was a great Pamino, though with much of the dialogue cut he didn't have much to show by way of character. Sumi Jo as Queen of the Night received star billing, even though she's on stage for all of only two songs - she came out in a giant, striking red dress which the audience even in the back of the huge amphitheatre gasped at. She sang the first part of "O Zitre Nicht" perfectly fine, though in concert mode instead of in character - but then audibly strained (and botched) the high notes in the exciting coloratura passage at the end. At intermission, an announcement explained that she was feeling ill but would sing through Act 2 anyway. So when she sang the famous Queen of the Night Aria and tentatively climbed up to this high Fs - and hit them, though softly - we were sympathetic.

The performance of the opera itself was kind of strange. All the music was sung in German, but in between the songs, a narrator summarized the plot and lyrics of each song in English - then, sometimes, chunks of dialogue from the German libretto were spoken in English before the singers went back into German for the singing. It was jarring to get jolted into and out of the opera's musical world - Alfred Molina's narration was serviceable, but his out-of-character delivery kept jolting us away, and seemed even more strange next to the spoken English dialogue. And we couldn't understand the German either, since there were no translations of the German, not even on the giant video screens at the side of the Bowl. They could have put the evening together so much better by performing the entire opera in English, with the English dialogue. For The Magic Flute, unlike for many other operas, there are some very good English translations, and the singspiel format of the opera would have made this English format perfect for a large amphitheatre. That way, we could have all understood the opera by just listening, dispensing for the need of a narrator (or for trying to add translations to the video feeds).

Despite my misgivings about the production text, it was a fun night. We spread out on a bench about halfway back in the amphitheatre, ate grapes and casually observed the proceedings. With the stepped up sound system, there will be many great concerts ahead this season: for the musical theatre lovers there is South Pacific with Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell - a restaging of the ecstatically reviewed Carnegie Hall concert from a few years ago. And Michael Tilson Thomas will conduct Beethoven's 9th at the end of the month!

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And in only two days:

American Ballet Theatre rolls into town! The gala program is on Thursday, and Othello goes over the weekend, with The Sleeping Beauty next week. I'm excited! And it seems a few of this blog's readers (will be there as well. :-)
(Symphonie Concertante photo by Rosalie O'Connor.)