If you are not familiar with the Bayview Music Festival, it is a music festival for pre-professional and high level college students in the Traverse Bay area in Northern Michigan. The mainstay of the program is its chamber music program but they have developed a strong opera and voice program in recent years.The theater that the operas are performed in is not a tradition setting. The Orchestra has to be off to the side and the singers watch the conductors on monitors. (SET PICTURE) It did release the opportunity for the audience to be up close to the action and there is no distance between the singers and the audience. It is also a small theater and limited resources. The challenge was to produce a Magic Flute that the audience in Northern Michigan could connect to.

 

I came up with the idea of it being a little boy’s dream. It became a very ‘Where the Wild things Are’ interpretation of Mozart’s great work. Since much of Magic Flute deals in myth and symbolism, I decided to add in imagery that a 10 year old boy might imagine. All the props ideas were taken from things that a 10 year would have going through his head (Star Wars, Spiderman, Harry Potter) The book that the boy’s father gives him to read to go to bed becomes the dragon in the first act. My set designer, Jared Cole, created a little boy’s bedroom where the shelves became gateways into the world Sarastro and the queen of the Night. (SUPRISES IN THE SET) I also added a dimension of the boy’s parents transforming into The Queen and Sarastro. In my version, the entire opera is the result of an agreement between Sarastro  and the Queen to teach Tamino  and Pamina the lessons of the enlightenment. My costume designer, Christopher Mueller created a costumed world that incorporated elements of the child’s world with the symbolism of the masonic world. (THREE LADIES) In the Prologue we are introduced to the backstory of the Magic Flute: we see the agreement between the Queen and Sarastro (THE AGREEMENT). We see the abduction of Pamina. We see the Fairies being charged with the Magic Flute and Bells (ICH VERGASS DIE ZAUBERDINGE). We see this world inaction. In this production, instead of only Tamino searching for the light and sun of the enlightenment, both he and Pamina is finding the balance between Myth and Reality, Darkness and light, Male and female energies. This was a choice on my part to smooth out the racial and sexist overtones that were considered normal and accepted during the time of Magic Flute but are outdated in our modern world.