Mozart: Die Zauberflote.(Sound Recording Review)

Hartelius, Mosuc; Beczala, Scharinger, Salminen; Chorus and Orchestra of Opernhaus Zurich, Welser-Most. Kultur DVD D2910, 151 mins.

Roschmann, Damrau; Hartmann, Keenlyside, Selig; Royal Opera, Covent Garden, C. Davis. BBC/Opus Arte OA 0886D (Naxos, dist.), 185 mins.

Mozart's Die Zauberflote im4tes contradictory interpretations. Is it a lighthearted fairy tale or a symbolic drama with heavy Masonic overtones? Or both at once? Each director and conductor has to come to grips with this balance of the light and the heavy, and the success of any production or recording can be measured by the extent to which that balance makes sense. While neither of these two DVDs is a complete success, each has its virtues.

The Kultur DVD is a bare-bones souvenir of a Zurich production from 2000, directed by Jonathan Miller and conducted by Franz Welser-Most. It is very sparse, lacking in the kind of extras that make DVDs worth purchasing. In addition, the English subtitles are full of howlers. (My favorite mangled line is "I'm not to all happy about this!"). Welser-Most's unpretentious, let's-get-on-with-it way with the score is enjoyable, though, and his cast has some real strengths.

Elena Mosuc shows some vocal strain dealing with the Queen of the Night's fiendish coloratura, but she makes a strong dramatic impression on-screen--you can feel as well as hear the tension of a mother imploring her beloved daughter to kill in her behalf. Matti Salminen makes a predictably impressive Sarastro, especially to those who remember his memorably menacing Hagen from the Met's Ring cycle, and as the young lovers Tamino and Pamina, Piotr Beczala and Malin Hartelius are stellar--especially Hartelius, who combines youth, charisma and ravishing vocalism to create a lovely heroine.

Miller's production is problematic. In an uncharacteristic, decidedly perverse form of directorial literalism, Volker Vogel's Monostatos performs in ...