Ray Brinzer

We went to the opera (well, technically, the singspiel) Friday night; on Hermann Hesse’s strong recommendation, we saw The Magic Flute.

This was a first for both Felabi and me. I’ve been to various symphonic performances, and have listened to enough “classical” music to have a strong, semi-educated sense of what I like. I like Mozart. I like The Magic Flute, too, having listened to various recordings… but unlike listening to a symphony on headphones, merely listening to recordings of opera seems a bit like reading a play; there’s a lot of important stuff missing. So, I paid too much money for the good seats, and dragged my beloved down to the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh to torture her with culture.

I can’t say the show lived up to my expectations, though I didn’t think it was bad, either. The strengths of the performance didn’t quite match the strengths of the opera itself… things just went their own way, and the result was odd, and less than it could have been.

For instance, the story begins with Tamino, the hero, in desperate flight from a monstrous serpent; Read more »