While Tamino sits forlornly in the serpent's stomach, three women with supernatural powers dressed in roaring 20’s fashion are perched from above.

When you do though, you realize that these are ace musical performances. This is ANIMATION!!!!! THAT SHOUTS and WOWS!!!!!Įven the most dedicated Mozart devotees - the ones who could do singalongs with any Mozart aria -are likely so overcome with the visual stimuli, as we all are, that they too might have to strain to focus on Mozart’s so delighting melodies. This isn’t just animation, in this writer’s view. Soon, we are with our hero where he lands, in the catacombs-like surrounds of the serpent’s stomach mingling with the skeletons of prior victims. The camera – and yes, it does envelop us in a feeling of cinema right from the get-go – zooms in on the serpent’s face and his menacing eyes.

He appears ant-sized as he sings an S.O.S, terrified by the ominous evil-eyed serpent/dragon slithering in animated blinks of high velocity in a dark forest. That guess puts you in a close solar system, as it turns out, when we meet our hero, Prince Tamino (tenor Pavel Petrov) looking like a singing paper doll. We need Marvel Comics’ lingo like this – and by the way, a word that later makes its way into the visual libretto- to begin to describe how Lyric’s animation-rich production of The Magic Flute astounds.Ī brilliant crimson curtain in a cutaway stage reminds of puppet theater as the so memorable overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute is played by the orchestra, under the baton of a female conductor, Karen Kamensek.

Houston grand opera the magic flute