For W’s birthday this year, I got him and me two tickets to the LA Opera’s performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. I splurged and got two of the best seats available — Founders Circle, G47 and G48, basically front row left of the Founders Circle balcony right above the orchestra section.
I really liked this production. It wasn’t a traditional production. Instead, the whole thing mimicked a silent movie, with the actors dressed and made up as characters in the old silent movie era and spoken dialog not spoken but projected onto the background, animated and projected onto the stage.
The singing was quite good, as was the performance of the orchestra. I’m not here to review it, so I won’t go into details. Suffice to say that, although some don’t like the radical departure from traditional staging, the LA Times critic seems to have enjoyed it.
The 2013 performance by the LA Opera was essentially the same production, just with different performers. If you want to get a hint of this year’s performance, you can watch the video the LA Opera put up on YouTube of extracts from the 2013 performance.
Both W and I enjoyed it. And it turns out W knew one of the Three Boys.