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San Francisco Opera: The Magic Flute

San Francisco Opera engaged MobileCast Media to increase subscription growth, ticket sales, and to reach out to younger demographics. Online Videos from the 2007 - 2008 Season:

- Samson and Delilah
- A Conversation With Graham Vick
- Tannhauser
- Appomattox
- The Magic Flute
- La Rondine
- Macbeth
- The Rake's Progress
- Madama Butterfly

Transcript

Donald Runnicles (Principal Conductor): I think this is the perfect opera to introduce anyone to the opera, in general. I think Die Zauberflote manages to cover a great deal of ground, it's immensely human, it's immensely funny, it can be immensely sad. It is full of the most glorious melodies. It resonates within all of us. It brings the child out of all of us. While it's a thrill to have a 6 year old, a 10 year old or a 16 year old for the first time in the opera. It’s wonderful to think that a sixty, a seventy or an eighty year old is also seeing it and also experiencing a childlike fascination.

We’re delighted to welcome back Piotr Beczala, who will be singing the role Tamino. Erika Miklósa who is making her debut with the company as the queen of the night. And Dina Kuznetsovaas Pamina. Georg Zeppenfeld as Sarastro, Rhoslyn Jones in the role of Papagena, one of our Adler fellows, and then we have Christopher Maltman, a landsman of mine, making his debut of with the company as Papageno.
The story of the Magic Flute is very much about couples, dualities, relationships between the characters, between the bird catcher Papageno who will eventually find his Papagena, three hours later. It’s the story of Tamino and Pamina, a princess who is being held apparently against her will and Tamino the prince has to go through some great hardships, having seen her picture and having clearly fallen in love with her. And then of course, the backdrop of all this is the queen of the night and Sarastro who clearly at some stage were together and they don’t see eye to eye on things.

Tamino and Papageno have been instructed to be silent, to speak to no one. And that’s part of their trial, these trials they all have to go through. They are instructed that no matter who speaks with them about anything they have to keep quiet. And when Pamina comes rushing on the scene having heard Tamino’s flute. She comes and he is utterly silent. She takes this to be a betrayal or the end of their relationship.
The final chorus is the apotheosis of the piece. One feels very much that it’s been a very cloudy, stormy day. Mozart writes this glorious chorus where you really do feel the sun; it’s luminous music. The sun is shining through his music and it’s a remarkable and very triumphant ending.

Gerald Scarfe (Designer): Well of course I haven’t only worked on the Magic Flute. I’ve worked with Pink Floyd, I’ve worked with Walt Disney. Pink Floyd was wonderful because I designed their show The Wall and designed all the animation sequences for that. Disney, I worked with Disney for five years on the movie Hercules. It was tricky because there were 900 people working on this movie and me, so one against 900. I lost out a little bit.

It’s my idea really to keep people involved with the story and even children. In this particular instance, in the Magic Flute, I like to bring children in as well, so there are some very kind of fun things in it, some little animals that run around and lots and lots of colorful costumes.

I think my idea overall was to make a popular Magic Flute. And I thought well, I really didn’t want to have normal animals. Why didn’t I have animals that were a mixture of one and another? A kind of hybrid animal. So I’ve got one that’s half an ostrich and half a giraffe. It’s got ostrich legs and a giraffe’s neck. It’s very, very tall and it’s this guy walking around on stilts. Very good. There’s half a porcupine, half a pelican who waddles on from the side. But the one who always get’s the audience is the little crocaguin. It’s a penguin’s body and a crocodile’s head. And he always comes on and wins the whole audience over. The children love that and so do the adults. It always gets laughs. This show has always done a lot of shows and that never fails. Having worked with Disney and the Nutcracker and so forth, I realized I have two jobs to do. I have to bring in not only the children but the adults. The adults have to be served just as in a Disney movie. The adults have to go just as the kids.

Made with the generous support of San Francisco Opera.

Produced and directed by John Houghton of MobileCast Media, Inc.