Five stars for Die Zauberflöte, Metropolitan Opera, New York — dazzling new production gets metatheatrical

The Metropolitan Opera has had several notable productions of Die Zauberflöte, including one by David Hockney and the most recent from Julie Taymor, a 20-year success. Simon McBurney’s new staging, which opened last Friday, faces that legacy with confidence and, in his Met debut, puts something great on stage.

McBurney embraces everything about the opera, not just the characters and story of the battle between dark and light, realised through Tamino and Pamina’s quest for love, but the spirit of fun, wonderment and humanity of Mozart’s score. Through an excellent cast, including tenor Lawrence Brownlee as Tamino, soprano Erin Morley as Pamina, baritone Thomas Oliemans as the bird-catcher Papageno (his Met debut) and soprano Kathryn Lewek as the Queen of the Night, this production is equal parts dazzling, grounded and laugh-out-loud funny.

Brownlee’s voice had a brilliant colour and a youthful quality that made his Tamino more charming than usual. Morley has already sung this role, the Queen’s daughter, at the Met and had perhaps the deepest effect of the night through her gorgeous, moving “Ach, ich fühl’s”. Olieman’s sounded slightly subdued during “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja”, but his voice gradually gathered more life and suppleness to go along with the physical vitality of his performance (he carries a stepladder for most of the show).

This is a deus-ex-machina opera, with magic often saving the day. The production puts all that plainly on stage, with a live Foley artist and live visual artist creating the sound effects, introducing characters and action (via chalkboard projected on a scrim) and interacting with the performers. It’s not about suspending disbelief but embracing theatricality. The orchestra is set just below the lip of the stage, characters move in and out of the pit and principal flautist Seth Morris climbs onstage to play the magic flute itself. Papageno sets down his magic bells by the pit, where Bryan Wagorn plays the solos — except near the end of act two, when Wagorn is late coming back from a coffee break and Oliemans must handle the instrument himself, with skill.

Conductor Nathalie Stutzmann was also a subtle part of the show, greeting and acknowledging characters as they passed by, and keeping a posed pace. She made her Met debut earlier this month in a musically excellent Don Giovanni; now, with the energy and colours from the orchestra and the superb phrasing from the singers in Die Zauberflöte, she has cemented a place as a leading Mozartian. The shape of all the music was as natural as could be.

This naturalness was part of the human touch. The temple is presented as a Masonic lodge, with an amiable Sarastro (bass Stephen Milling, relaxed and commanding) presiding over meetings and Monastatos (tenor Brenton Ryan) a craven, hapless lackey. Eschewing mysticism, the conflict of values between Sarastro and the Queen came to the fore as relatable, unexaggerated drama.

Lewek is perhaps the great Queen of the Night in contemporary opera. She did not hit every high F in “Der Hölle Rache” — which brought down the house — but she modulated her two great arias with expression and intelligence, gaining deep sympathy before incandescing.

★★★★★

To June 10, metopera.org