(Dale Ferguson served as designer for both the sets and costumes, which are a combination of picture-perfect 1960s middle-class apparel for the residents and suitably fantastical garb for the opera’s characters.) What results is a kind of opera within an opera, with the action taking place around an amazingly realistic two-story house, which rotates on a massive stage turntable and is set against a striking, star-specked night sky. In this conceit, the neighborhood children mount “The Magic Flute” with the help, obviously, of some first-rate professional singers who just happen to be around, and dozens of parents sit on lawn chairs in the back yard to take it all in. But is this undeniably imaginative conception too clever for its own good?Īustralian director Neil Armfield, who has staged two previous Lyric offerings, including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 2010-11, has set this interpretation in an Austrian expatriate enclave in an idealized 1960s “Leave it to Beaver” vision of suburban Oak Park, Ill. Much of the beauty and charm of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s masterwork shines through in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production, which runs for nine more performances through Jan. 27 Where: Lyric Opera of Chicago, Civic Opera House, 20 N.
14 and eight subsequent performances through Jan. The Magic Flute Recommended When: 7:30 p.m.
0 kommentar(er)
