Customer Reviews

Mozart: Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute)

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Claudio Abbado may be aging, but he has devoted his new 'Magic Flute' to youth--the leads are mostly rising opera stars, and the pit orchestra is the Mahler Chamber Orch., which is for up-and-coming orchestral players. The fact that Abbado favors period practices makes the score sound fresh and light--there is a marked absence of vibrato in the strings, a prominence of woodwinds, and faster-than-usual tempos (often near the speeds that real period recordings from Norrington, Gardiner, and Christie employ). However, the singers use the same amount of expressive vibrato that we are used to in the opera house. You'll hear some stage noises from these live (and lively) performances from Modena, Italy in Sept. 2005.

For me, the most exciting discovery here is the Tamino, tenor Christoph Strehl, who sounds as ardent as Fritz Wunderlich. Like Wunderlich, Strehl has a melting tone, robust delivery, and an elegant line. His 'Die Bildnis' aria comes off with ease--you'd never guess how treacherous it is for other tenors. Frankly, I haven't heard as good a Tamino since Wunderlich's death in the late Sixties.

The Three Ladies aren't always perfectly in tune, but this is a live performance, and one has to make allowances for how difficult Mozart's vocal writing is. Most German productions treat Papageno as a caricature, but Abbado is rather a sober sides, and Hanno Müller-Brachmann (a standout in Haydn's Creation on Naxos) doesn't go for laughs. I wish he had--Papageno is a fantastic character, after all--and not every aria goes as smoothly as it could, but Müller-Brachmann is certainly quite good.

The two best-known singers in the cast are Dorothea Roschmann as Pamina and Rene Pape as Sarastro. Some listeners may not take immediately to Roschmann's darker, more mature tone. Pamina is usually sung by a light lyric soprano, and Roschmann's voice is hardly girlish. I wish she showed more longing and tenderness, but she is never less than good. Pape may be the greatest non-Russian basso alive and potentially a great artist. His arias are totally secure and sung with affecting emotion. As with Strehl, you'd never guess that other basses have to struggle with Sarastro's music.

My second favorite singer here is Erika Mikósa, who owns the role of the Queen of the Night in Europe (this spring she was great at the Met, too). She is amazing in her ability to let us unerstand the words--usually a major failing among coloraturas--but also for beauty of tone and high-flying agility. Not since Lucia Popp in the Sixties has a voice fit the part so wel.

Despite the live setting, the voices are as perfectly recorded as in a studio, and DG gives the production lovely, natural sonics. The spoken dialogue is just enough to follow the story, which is good for us non-German speakers. I think most listeners will be delighted with Abbado's efforts. He had never conducted the work before this recording, saving it for his maturity. That was a wise decision. Although rather low-key throughout, his conducting is full of refinement and affection--on disc, his only rivals are Klemperer and Bohm in their classic sets. We've waited a long time for Die Zauberflote to return at this level of excellence.

The classical recording of The Magic Flute dated back to Boehm/Wunderlich's time. That was almost half a century ago.
Some treacherously difficult arias in this opera made first-rate performance of it difficult.
Claudio Abbado, on the other hand, used a batch of relatively young soloists in this production, and to very good end judging from the overall performance.
I don't want to compare Strehl with Wunderlich, or Mueller-Brachmann with his teacher Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. That's not being fair.
Despite this, the evenness of the soloists' performance outshined that even of Boehm's star-studded cast, especially in the two leading female roles of Pamina and the Queen of Night. Roeschmann and Miklosa are both more secure in tone and more pleasing to the ears.
Rene Pape's Sarastro also shines.
If ever you want to pick some weaknesses in this recording, they come in a couple of ensembles, mainly between the Three Ladies and the Two Armoured Men. However, the quartet between Pamina and the Three Boys are very effective, and Roeschmann gave a very outstanding account with the three youngsters in that ensemble.
I have heard some Taminos since Wunderlich's time, and would not go to the length of comparing Christoph Strehl with Fritz, suffice it that among contemporary Taminos, Strehl's portrayal really stands out. He may not be as lyrical as Fritz, but he does handle the role with apparent vocal ease, some thing clearly could not be taken for granted.
I do not find Roeschmann's tone too mature. This soprano is really coming of age vocally. It is time she consider taking on some even more taxing roles for operatic sopranos. Miklosa hasn't recorded much apart from this role of Queen of Night. I hope she is not those 'one-role' singers.

I live in Modena, Italy, and I was lucky to see this "Zauberflote" live, at the Teatro Comunale, when it was on stage, last september. During those evenings, the album was recorded. It was an extraordinary experience, really a big show, and I'm happy to re-live again and again, in this album. Don't miss it, especially if you love Claudio Abbado and his magical touch.

This is a stellar Zauberflote in essentially all respects. The recorded sound is immediate, live and convincing. The orchestral playing is superb, and the vocalists in the aggregate are first rate, with momentary exception. The only recent, competetive Zauberflote of modern instrument variety is Solti's with Sumi Jo as the Queen of the Night. That performance also has a special place in my heart, but this newcomer sits on the shelf next to the Solti recording. There are many other great Zauberflotes, but this one is for the 21st Century.

For its outstanding popularity over more than two hundred years of having been played by the world's great opera theaters, it is quite puzzling that Die Zauberflöte has not yet received a recording that achieves perfection. Yet, in this 2006 recording from Modena, Claudio Abbado may have achieved just that. While Klemperer, Böhm, and other great Mozart conductors have brought great insight into Mozart's highly philosophical opera, Abbado adds something special that makes listening to this recording all the more a delight compared with several predecessors. It's not just the lean textures that Abbado provides to the score that delineates his work from other conductors. It isn't his wonderfully thought out tempi either, nor is it his keen sense of theatricality that makes his "period" orchestra sound more alive than many "historically correct" recordings of this opera. Abbado is a high priest of music, one who can probe into the intricacies of Mahler, Verdi, Mussorgsky, Beethoven, and Mozart and bring a sense of spirituality that eludes many of today's best conductors. For a score that incorporates Mozart's quasi-spiritual beliefs, it goes to say that no other conductors is perhaps more fit to the job than Claudio Abbado. All the other elements of his conducting style just fall naturally into place and make an experience that is otherwordly and unique. Listen to the overture alone...those clean textures are only supported by his ability to make the many triplet/Masonic themes jump out of the page. His invocation of the different characteristics of the principals like Pamina's nobility, Tamino's heroism, the Queen's spiteful vehemence, Papageno's carefree spirit, and Sarastro's benevolence and wisdom is clearly laid out for the listener. It is his ability to change the colors of his score that make him unlike any other conductor before him--a master of the musical idiom of Mozart. In his hands, Mozart's score achieves a degree of spiritual greatness unmatched by any recording committed to tape in history. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra that he so scrupulously trained from young players also adds to the attractiveness of his music making. The lean textures are only bettered by their ability to respond to Abbado's demands on the music. It also helps that the recording was captured in fantastic sound.

His cast is just another layer of icing on the cake. Dorothea Röschmann is today's best Pamina, and what a delight it is to listen to her full-bodied, fruity voice negotiating with Pamina's exquisite line. Her intelligence is also an asset, with the highest praise going to her lieder singer nuances for highlighting the sensitivities of an otherwise weaker role. Her duet with Papageno is simply the best I've heard, while her arias are colored with such autumnal shades that one cannot help but be enamored with her character. Her Tamino, Christoph Strehl, is the best tenor to handle the part since Fritz Wunderlich took on the role during his time. He is in splendid voice and gives the role a wonderful balance of light and darkness that makes him irresistible to listen to. He is also alert to the role's more dramatic aspects and makes Tamino more three dimensional than many of his contemporaries. Hanno Müller-Brachmann is a very good singer with the right weight for Papageno. It helps too that he is able to capture the humorous aspects of the birdman without going into caricature. Erika Miklosa makes a vocally splendid Queen of the Night. Only her dialogue before Der Hölle Rache is impaired by her lack of command of the German language. No one else besides Lucia Popp and Diana Damrau have been endowed with better instruments to take on this incredibly difficult role. Best of all in this cast is Rene Pape's noble Sarastro, perhaps the greatest of all the bass voices that ever assumed this part. His "O Isis und Osiris" never fails to touch me every time I listen to it.

Coming in excellent sound and showing off many of the greatest exponents of Mozart's music today, I have no doubts that this recording will achieve classic status within years of its release. Along with Solti's, this is another perfect Flute to get acquainted with. Five stars for this one!

This is a revelation in recorded opera. The Magic Flute was my start in listening to opera (many years ago), so I have heard most versions out there including Solti, Klemperer, Bohm, Levine, Sawalisch, etc. Actually, I haven't heard a really bad recording, but this one is my favorite. The performance is stellar in terms of conducting and singing. The pace (tempo) is perfect. The sonics are audiophile quality!

You will not find a better contemporary recording of The Magic Flute than this one. Recorded live. Yet with all the clarity and precision of a perfectly engineered studio recording. There are no glaring errors in this performance, or even minor errors. Indeed, many times, if you're familiar with the opera, you'll find yourself anticipating errors in forthcoming demanding passages, only to learn they're not to be found. The vocalists are superb, without exception, but I think Claudio Abbado is the heart of this performance and recording. Such care is devoted to the niceties of the orchestral elements of the work, in addition to the vocal performances. The results are exceptional depth and impressive nuance. Abbado's interpretation lands somewhere between "big sound" and "intimate sound." At times, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra sounds not like a chamber orchestra, but like the Berlin Philharmonic. Such occasional expansiveness works very well on this recording, however. Ultimately, there's a supreme confidence throughout this performance that rather apparently stems from Abbado's confident interpretation, whatever the work's various shades, moods, colors, etc. You're guaranteed a first-rate recording of The Magic Flute here.