Les Arts Florissants, William Christie - Mozart - Die Zauberflote (1996)

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.