Die Zauberflöte. The Magic Flute often plays a special role in educational contexts. The disappointment is correspondingly greater when a stage performance has little to do with what one has come to understand in the work musically, dramatically and poetically. For us, the earlier Zurich Magic Flute productions by Martin Kušej and Tatjana Gürbaca belonged to that type of Regietheater which obscures a work rather than clarifying it. All the greater, then, was our pleasure that Zurich Opera, with Daniele Finzi Pasca’s new production, chose a wholly different course. For us, this new Magic Flute was an unqualified success – musically and scenically, imaginative and coherent, and remarkable for its sense of overall unity.
