She is well matched by the Tamino of Pavel Petrov, who sang with a warm, burnished tenor and also inhabited his character’s youth and innocence.

Fang exudes charm, grace, and innocence in her Pamina.

As in her excellent Zerlina in Lyric’s most recent Don Giovanni, Ms. Fang, looking a bit like Louise Brooks in the fine costumes of Esther Bialas, utilized her silvery soprano to glorious effect throughout. There is better news on the singing and acting fronts. What had begun as charming, interesting and intriguing imagery had by the end become distracting, and frankly, annoying. By the middle of the second act, this reviewer began begging, pleading, longing for one single moment of stillness, a moment of repose with direct communication between singer and audience. Every scene is over-decorated with business and swirling images-even when soprano Ying Fang sings her exquisite “Ach, ich fuhl’s”, the production encases her in a cartoon snow globe with a bleak, bare tree, as if the audience can’t figure out that she’s singing of despair and lost love.Īnd there’s no actual, physical magic flute instead we have a Tinker Bell-ish female fairy trailing musical notes behind her. The spotlighted, white-face principals rarely have contact with one another.

There is sensory overload, and very little humanity. There is constant distracting movement in the animation, and every sung image has to be displayed in a cartoon instead of the audience’s imagination.

And yet, with all these fantastical elements, it really doesn’t work.

Lyric opera magic flute review