This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

22nd September 2007

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From the first notes of the overture, William Kentridge’s production of The Magic Flute demonstrates those features that distinguish it from other renditions of Mozart’s opera and that, for South African audiences, make it one of the brightest lights in the constellation of local performing arts.  

The use of an astronomical metaphor is not accidental. The scope of Kentridge’s animations, projected across the broad sweep of stage, set, flies, backdrop and proscenium arch, leave one with the same impression as staring at a dazzling night sky (indeed, this effect is most calculatedly achieved when the Queen of the Night delivers her famous aria beneath a veritable galaxy of stars). There is, moreover, an interpretive resonance: astronomy, along with mathematics, chemistry and the physical sciences, was one of the major preoccupations of the Enlightenment – and The Magic Flute is a self-consciously “enlightened” work.

The opera follows the travails of Prince Tamino and his inadvertent, not-so-faithful sidekick Papageno as they search for love and learning (Papageno is less interested in the latter, but he does gain some along the way) while trying to resist the temptations of violence and physical desire. Tamino is asked by The Queen of the Night to save her daughter, Pamina, from the cruel Sarastro, who has ostensibly kidnapped her. He finds, however, that Sarastro is actually a benevolent leader and has Pamina’s best interests at heart. Tamino and, reluctantly, Papageno agree to undergo a series of trials in order to prove their worth. In the end they are rewarded with wisdom and, suffice it to say, they both get their girl.

The neo-classical “pillars” of reason and virtue are celebrated in Mozart’s libretto. In Kentridge’s version, the Enlightenment insistence on order and scientific knowledge is echoed in recurrent and thematically linked images and props: a metronome, a blackboard with protractor and compass – while the animations emphasise geometric figures such as right-angled triangles, circles and tangents – and “new inventions” such as the balloon or the camera (the latter forms part of a deliberately anachronistic Victorian setting).

The complex relationships between various symbols in the convoluted mythology informing the opera are explained visually as they merge with each other, or as one morphs into another. This also provides some context for the initiation rites of the Freemasons, on which the ordeals faced by Tamino are based. A cosmic sphere with a gravitational orbit looks like an eye; that eye, inside a triangle or pyramid, alludes to the Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris, who are served by Sarastro and the priests of his temple; Osiris is typically associated with order as opposed to chaos, while Isis is often depicted as a bird; Papageno is a bird-catcher. One needn’t, of course, make these connections to enjoy the animations – Kentridge’s drawings are a delight on their own. And the artist-diector is careful not to take himself or the opera’s symbolism too seriously: the eye in the pyramid winks cheekily at the audience.

It is easy to be carried away by the projections and the high-tech set, but there is as much magic created by the cast and the orchestra under the baton of conductor Piers Maxim. The season in South Africa has been billed as a “homecoming” for the show, but that is not entirely accurate; it is, after all, not particularly South African in conception or design. This is not a criticism, but an observation – indeed, there is something potentially liberating in the affirmation that this is a top international production that merely happens to feature only South African performers in its current manifestation. Insofar as there is a “homecoming”, it is that of singers like Angela Kerrison (Pamina), Musa Nkuna (Tamino), Kaiser Nkosi (Sarastro) and others, who have been based in Europe. However, the bulk of the cast, as well as the separate choruses and orchestral musicians for the Cape Town and Johannesburg runs, have been locally auditioned and recruited.

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