Julie Taymor's "Magic Flute" Down Under With Australian Opera

"Julie Taymor's renowned and fanciful production of The Magic Flute, which originated late in 2006 at the Metropolitan Opera New York, arrived triumphantly at the Sydney Opera House on January 6. Impressively reconstructed locally and directed by Matthew Barclay, it inaugurated a Mozart-intensive Opera Australia summer holiday season. While this Flute is memorable for its innovative good humour and often cartoonish design touches, its premiere under the baton of Jonathan Darlington was only very intermittently anything like as impressive musically. Its vocal apex was Emma Pearson’s pretty well impeccable assault on the Queen of the Night’s second aria. Andrew Brunsdon’s Tamino improved as the evening wore on. Andrew Jones never quite managed to creep convincingly inside Papageno’s happy-go-lucky shoes, but David Parkin was a reasonably sonorous Sarastro and Nicole Car a pleasing Pamina. This is the abridged family version of Taymor’s production, so it is odd that only two of the 28 performances will be matinees." [Source]