The ENO was putting on a performance of the Magic Flute by Mozart, and we managed to get tickets to the last performance, which was a bit exciting. After Philip Glass it was nice to hear an opera with a bit of melody to it. The staging was a bit plain, modern day dress and not much action on the stage. Again they tried to do some clever things with bits of paper, that seems to be where opera staging is at the moment.
They did some quite interesting things with a blackboard (you would be surprised), and they did make a big deal about having this "foley" artist on stage. They were standing in a glass box off to the side of the stage and would make various sound effects throughout the performance. That was something I hadn't seen before.
It was sung in English too, which I'm not sure I like. English with surtitles is always a bit weird, shouldn't we be able to understand them in that case. Though I still needed the surtitles quite a bit. So why not just sing in the German? It's all about the sound afterall, and German is quite a cool sounding language.
The really disappointing part, ignoring the lack of drama on the stage, was the Queen of the Night missing her high notes in the really famous aria. If you want to hear how it is supposed to sound, check out this link. Ours didn't sound like that, there are about 6 times that she has to hit some really high notes, and every time they were more of a scream. Very disappointing. I guess making her sing it whilst her character was in a wheelchair probably didn't help.
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