Customer Reviews

Mozart - Die Zauberflöte / Mannion, Dessay, Blochwitz, Scharinger, Hagen, Les Art Florissants, Christie

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This performance is very involving; the period instruments have an unusually warm sound, but retain their clarity. The sopranos do not shriek excessively, as is the case with many larger-scale performances. I never liked opera until I heard performances like this; the singing is sweet, pure, enthusiastic. The sound quality is excellent; warm, detailed, somewhat dry--but it suits this performance perfectly.

You are right, Natalie Dessay sings the Queen of the Nights aria a semi-tone lower. In fact, the whole opera is a tone lower. It is recorded on Authentic instruments, which were tuned a semi tone lower in mozarts day than they are now. Therefore almost all pieces recorded on baroque instruments are a semi-tone lower.
I think the recording is masterful. Semi tone lower or not...

This is a wonderful recording. William Christie brings to Mozart all the finesse and class he brought to the French repertoire. The musicians of Les Arts Florissants make the most marvelous sounds, this is orchestral playing of the highest order. All the singers are excellent, but it is the Tamino of Hans Peter Blochwitz that stands out, he is quite simply exquisite: his lyrical, liquid, gorgeous voice is a wonder. Rosa Mannion as Pamina is good, but nowhere in the class of Blochwitz. Anton Scharinger repeats his dutiful Papageno (he and Blochwitz recorded the same roles for Harnoncourt on TELDEC) and he is good, but more charm would had been welcome. Dessay as the Queen of the Night is accurate and needless to say, spectacular, but a more dangerous presence would have add drama to the recording. Still, this is a quite magical Flute, and I will come back to it often, and now must be considered one of the better ones on record.

Coming from a highly successful carrer in Baroque choral music (Rameau, Mondonville, Charpentier, Monteverdi) William Christie and his talented Les Arts Florissants give us what is arguably the most challenging Zauberflote around. We think we know it all: the "Queen of the Night" aria, Tamino & Pamina, Papageno & Papagena... Christie challenges our convictions: why should Mozart sound like Verdi when his background is closer to Bach and Monteverdi? Why should Mozart's chamber and piano music sound so subdued and our modern versions of Zauberflote be sung forte or mezzo-forte? In this recording (as other reviewers have pointed out) all instruments are toned as they would have been in Mozart's time, and the conductor does not force the singers to do bravura arias all the time. The result is a unique recording that will give much satisfaction to all listerners. Even if you own other recordings of Zauberflote, try this one. It will be a pleasant and welcome choc.

It's odd that this older period-style Magic Flute sounds so close to Claudio Abbado's new version released just last month. A decade ago, in 1996, William Christie was at the leading edge of authenticity, yet now we have a mainstream conductor adopting the same gesutres: strings playing without vibrato, reduced orchestra, and 'unforced singing,' as Christie calls it. The good news for him is that his recording easily keeps up with the new one in almost every way.

Despite the period flavor, tempos are not rushed--Christie is actually slower than usual in the Queen of the Night's music. He does that to give the excellent Natalie Dessay room for more expression. In general Christie is aiming at a natural theatricality that is neither pompous nor archly fairy tale--just as Abbado does, too. The Tamino of Hans Peter Blochwitz is vocally more beautiful than any on disc since Fritz Wunderlich, though Blochwitz is more lyrical than ardent. His Pamina is unknown to me, the modest, sweet-voiced Rosa Mannion. I'm also unaware of the Papageno, Anton Scharinger, who is genial and lively but with no attempt at humor--Christie clearly didn't want a Papageno who clowns around.

It's in several leading roles that Abbado goes ahead of Christie, because Mannion and Scharinger are unimaginative and sometimes only pleasant. Even Dessay, gifted with such a brilliant technique, doesn't sound threatening or particularly angry as the villainess of the piece. Rene Pape is such a commanding Sarastro for Abbado that Reinhard Hagen, doing a serviceable job, sounds disappointing when he tunrs out to have weak, gravelly low notes.

I've owned period Die Zaubeflotes from Norrington and Gardiner as well, and Christie's is the best of the lot, a vital, engaging, natural account.

This recording, made in studio in 1995, stems from a production premiered in 1994 at the Aix-en-Provence festival, staged by the Canadian Robert Carsen. It was Christie's first recording of a Mozart opera (two years later did Entführung, and seems to have stopped there. See my review of Mozart - Die Entführung aus dem Serail / Schäfer, Petibon, Bostridge, Paton, Ewing, Löw, Les Arts Florissants, Christie) and one of his first forays out of late 16th-early 17th century repertoire (French baroque and Haendel). He shows a great affinity for Mozart, and is nowhere radically "baroque" (e.g. favoring hard-driven tempos) in his approach. Yes, his conducting has energy, drive and snap: just listen to the intro to "Zu hilfe!", for instance - it's not just music, it's theatre: you can feel the danger. But Christie can also be genial and laid-back, as in the first Papageno aria - Solti in 1991 is far more radical here, with the good ol' Vienna Philharmonic (Die Zauberflote / The Magic Flute). Christie even allows himself now and then some expressive and very romantic rubatos. But he is also refreshingly precise - the 16th notes of the second chord in the overture do not sound as 8th or quarter-notes as so many others (for the sake, one surmises, of "solemnity") - and one senses that he makes a point in following the score, not the "interpretive tradition". The "baroque" practice can be heard in the use of appoggiaturas in some arias (Queen of the Night) as well as in the long cadenza at the end of the first Dame trio (disc 1, track 2, 5:30). And of course, everything is played half a tone under modern pitch - a blessing for the Queen of the Night and a nightmare for Sarastro, I suppose - the revenge of Womankind, perhaps? The timbral difference of period instruments is essentially perceptible in woodwinds and brass, not really in string tone. Period instrument fans such as myself find that they bring a refreshingly vivid orchestral color.

Christie has a good to exceptional cast of singers. There used to be a tradition of casting Tamino to heavier tenors, of near heldentenor type. Blochwitz is the pure Mozartean, lighter typed tenor, and so much for the better: the voice has a quality of silk and sweetness - although, for all its sweetness, it does show traces of unsteadiness in "Dies Bildniss..." (disc 1 track 5). Rosa Mannion I find is an exceptional Pamina, with angelic purity of voice and sweetness in the piano nuance above the stave (Alan Blyth, in his Gramophone's survey of January 2006 also singled out Mannion, on a par with Lisa Della Casa, as his ideal Pamina). To my ears, the reedy tone of "period" woodwinds adds a lot to the plangent character of "Ach ich fühl's". Scharinger has the vocal body and characterization of the great Papagenos. His duets with Mannion are great, the voices blend marvellously together.

Willard White is a fine Speaker, low-voiced and solemn - perhaps a bit too solemn. I find Steven Cole's Monostatos a bit too soft-grained to fully convey the nastiness and menace of the character. Reinhard Hagen as Sarastro has all the required low notes - and possibly not the most interesting characterization, but then Sarastro is a role difficult to nuance out of a generalized solemn kindness. The two priests and two armored men call for no criticism.

I find Christie's 3 kids exceptional in that, on the opposite pole from the solemn, mature, un-childish Tölzer Knabenchor or Wiener Sängerknaben type, they really sound like KIDS - in addition to which they are also pitch-right, a feature rarely encountered with the Austrian adolescents.

The spoken text is appropriately trimmed, that is still fairly complete but reduced just enough to avoid boredom. It is delivered I find without that much dramatic tension (Papageno sounds hardly startled when Tamino first calls him, "He da!") but lots of humor, and Scharinger-Papageno has an irresistible Viennese accent (and the way he rushes his explanatory prattling with Pamina in Act I scene 14, track 9, is a nice theatrical idea, too). In general it is the singers who also speak the text, except for the first and third lady, Speaker, two Priests and two armored men, replaced by German actors- presumably for ensuring a perfect accent. Dessay spent a season in the troupe of the Vienna Opera, so one can expect her German accent to be just fine. The Liverpool-born Rosa Mannion is credited as the speaker of her own role - and I have some doubts about that claim. It is clearly she who speaks the dialogue with Tamino and Papageno before "Ach Ich fühl's" (some peculiarities of accent and diction can be distinctly recognized) but I am not so sure in the long Act I dialog with Papageno and Act II dialog with the Queen of the Night, as, although the timbre is quite similar, I don't hear those peculiarities and find the German accent here well-nigh perfect. Anyway this is a petty detail "for the record" which causes no disturbance whatsoever.

All in all, I wouldn't say this is the "best" Flute (among those I know Solti's 1991 recording is also quite exceptional, and anyway there is not such thing as "the best" in music interpretation) but it is certainly one of those.

Mozart's Die Zauberflöte is one of the greatest operas, and sorry to say, Christie simply does not do it justice. His use of period instruments, as well the lowering of the pitch, is certainly interesting. But this is where the interest ends. The cast does not shine, which is horribly disappointing considering the cast, headed by the beautiful Natalie Dessay. I went into this album with the highest of hopes, but there is absolutely no passion by any of the cast. Dessay is technically flawless as the Queen of the Night, but uninspiring. There is no rage here, perhaps due to the fact that she showed some reticence playing an "evil" role. Papageno (in my opinion one of the most endearing characters in this opera) is not bumbling, witless, and charming. He is dull. Pamina is likewise. The only singer who deserves credit is Tamino, who has a wonderfully light register. But this is not enough to purchase this album, certainly not at this price. If the listener is looking for a recording that includes passion as well as flawless technique and orchestration, I would say that your best bet would be with Solti and Sumi Jo. Happy listening!

I'm sorry, but to all these 5-star reviewers... has nobody here listened to Klemperer's version? or Fricsay's ? or Karajan's ? or Gardiner's at least? yes, I know, those (expect Gardinder's) are not on original instruments and the singers don't "sing on their breath", as Christie says he wanted them to in his notes. However, I think that a music with a level of contrasts that only Mozart is capable of, with all these opposite binaries of light and dark, truth and lie, man and woman, etc. that are posed in the libretto and the score, this version seems way too retrained to me. Apolinean, almost. I love to hear a strong queen of the night, a wise Sarastros, an infuriating Monostatos, a charming Papagena, a not-so-thoughtful but adorable Papageno... none of which I find in Christie's version. Sure, the singing is quite good, and the orchestra plays beautifully, but I just don't get carried away by this performance as much as I do with the ones I mentioned -particularly Klemperer. Where's the passion here in 'Pa-pa-pa'? where's the scariest moment with the Queen of the Night? where's the mischievous and insolent Monostatos? I feel all the arias are played in a very similar, boring tone. Note I'm not saying anything about modern vs original instruments, this is not what this is about. I wanted to hear a more engaging, more intense Magic Flute, but this is not what Christie delivers here.

I discovered lyrics less than one year ago with Bergman's Magic Flute. Then I listened a lot of other versions. None of them was as good as this one: soft strings, highly-controled voices. Scharinger-Papageno, Blochwitz-Tamino and the Three Boys are particularly impressive: they are singing, but it sounds just as if they were speaking naturally! O so ein Magic Flute is mehr als Golt und Kronen wert...

with this performance of the Zauberfloete, William Christie proves that he is the very great opera conductor who is able to give us this Mozart opera better than anybody. Even if you have already more "Magic Flutes" you still need this!