We sat down for an exclusive interview with Valeria Perboni and William Eley from Opera Greenwich whose production of The Magic Flute runs at Greenwich Theatre London from 20th – 22nd June. Tickets here.
The Magic Flute is such a well-loved opera, but also kind of wild in its plot—giant snakes, enchanted instruments, mysterious trials. What was your entry point as directors to make it feel cohesive and fresh?
Cohesive, is an interesting word when it comes to The Magic Flute, because it sort of isn’t in its rawest form – it can appear to be a bit all over the place. We realised when deep diving that the opera is a sort of “game-of-two-halves” insomuch as the “bad guy” changes half way through. We know Sarastro has kidnapped someone’s child and is intent on ruling through his ideology, but we end up, in a strange turn of events, cheering for him at the end and being thankful the Queen of the Night gets banished. Brigid Brophy writes wonderfully about this, so we decided to focus on that aspect – the duality. We haven’t changed anything, but we’ve realised that the coherency of each half is just a matter of perspective, and this really colours the production, and is something we haven’t seen. While we are not shying away from the magical element, we are letting them coexist inside a world of perspectives – POVs – where the internal world of the characters, and their relationships to each other are the core and gravitational centre of the events. For us it was about power, about motherhood, about internal journey.
This production is sung entirely in German—was that a deliberate choice to honour the original, or did it bring something new to the way the story is told?
It’s not necessarily about honouring the original, but for us, to change the language would be to change the music. The way a language sounds changes how it reaches you as an audience member, and to translate that just can’t do it justice – there’s a rhythm, musicality and a percussion to the original that just affects you differently!
Opera can sometimes feel intimidating to people who didn’t grow up with it. How did you approach this production with the aim of connecting to modern audiences?
By forgetting about what came before and shaking off the stigma. We’ve thought about the production in a bold, visual and immersive way, with little regard for making it “operatic”. Our production artwork and marketing very much highlights that – look at our key art and you may mistake it for an action film – well why not create a production that’s more like that than the traditional dresses and black tie affairs so often seen?! I think it all comes down to just trying to tell a good story, if you can do that, you can convert someone to be an opera lover.
There’s a strong theme of duality in The Magic Flute—light and dark, reason and emotion, order and chaos. How did you want to explore that visually or emotionally in your staging?
We think this is exactly the core of our production. Visually, we are taking our references from nature, and the concept of awe – think about the moments of staring at nature and thinking it’s actually pretty close to magical – light and darkness become then intrinsically part of the visual design as much as they are part of the story. Emotionally, we are trying to put the emphasis on the impossibility of knowledge – every story has multiple sides, fragments of perspectives, opinions, lived experiences, so reason only gets us so far, and emotion gets us too far from the truth, so where does the truth lie? We have decided to focus on the character of the Queen especially from this point of view as we feel it’s often one-sided and unredeemable, but here there is more to the story, it’s about a fragile mind, a fragmented personality that triggered by trauma, loss, and her own desperate need to re-establish her motherhood, fractures and crumbles in front of our eyes. The character of Pamina has changed as well, as we were enjoying the challenge of turning this slightly misogynistic libretto into a feminist manifesto, from the damsel in distress, to the heroine of the story, equality being the word that we want to be left ringing in the theatre at the end of the show.
What was it like working with both seasoned opera performers and emerging artists from the Opera Greenwich Artist Development Programme? Did anything surprise you in that collaboration?
We knew from day one that the quality of performer taking part in the development programme was extremely high, so when we started rehearsing, the fact that one couldn’t tell an “emerging artist” from a “seasoned professional” wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise, however, was the amount of crossover between the singers – where they’d previously worked, what they were going on to do after etc.. this meant that the company had a real bond from day one – this even extended to our community chorus. It’s lovely when the process feels like a real community working towards a goal, as opposed to separate individuals doing their own bit.
People often feel stuck between worlds—careers, expectations, creative ambitions. Tamino goes on a kind of spiritual journey in this opera; do you think there’s a version of that story arc that feels relatable today?
Absolutely. We think and we hope that each audience member will find themselves relating to one character or another at different points of the opera. Tamino has a huge heart and is an action-driven person, always up for a challenge, but at the beginning still somewhat immature and naive. By the end of the story he realises his biggest strength are his companions, his friend Papageno, and his life partner Pamina. Pamina goes on a different but equally life-changing journey, becoming a woman with strong beliefs and a true leader. The Queen and Sarastro are both different perspectives of one same story, two contrasting opinions unknowingly working towards the same goal. We hope that some people in the audience will recognise themselves in the role of the Queen as it is depicted here – not as the one dimensional evil queen, but as a complex woman struggling with grief, trauma who is redeemed by her daughter’s love. However, we think that most of all, Papageno will be the audience’s friend and the most relatable of all – he self identifies as “a simple guy, who would love some wine…” (don’t we all??)
There’s such a famous aria in this opera—the Queen of the Night’s —how do you approach staging such an iconic moment without falling into cliché or predictability?
When approaching any piece, we have to forget what’s come before and “the way” of doing things, instead looking at the story of the character and their truth. In doing this, we direct our attention towards the sincerity of the moment, because this Queen exists in this world which is informed by this interpretation. The Queen’s actions and motivations should reflect this truth, which really helps the director work out how to stage a piece. On a more tangible level, we’ve tried to look at visualising the internal life of the Queen, something we haven’t yet seen done, at least not in this way…
Opera Greenwich is known for putting a unique spin on classic works. Without giving too much away, what’s something unexpected or contemporary that audiences might notice in The Magic Flute?
The original libretto is a challenge – we’ve had to wrangle with changing some outdated references and perspectives – an obvious way to modernise the piece, but visually, we’ve taken inspiration from some exciting fantasy worlds, so it’s a little more sci-fi/fantasy than it is temples and pyramids. We’re particularly inspired by His Dark Materials and the visual language of the brilliant BBC series, how we bring this to life… you’ll have to come and see!