Unlike any other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVikZ8Oe_XA

AMADEUS

After visiting Salzburg and seeing the Mozart film, I recall that he was a visionary, a composer who was committed to employing fresh thinking to how music was written, produced, and savored.

So it is no wonder that a unique production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute honors the impresario's convention-breaking traditions centuries after he created the extraordinary work.

I saw the show last Saturday night. It was a farewell and a spontaneous gift for the Zarzuela singers that included a celebratory drink and a farewell to Conductor James Conlon, who is in his 20th and final season as the company's Music Director.

On a personal note, the performance was dedicated to Alyce de Roulet Williamson, a beautiful soul who passed in March.  A philanthropist I knew very well in my days as a Columnist and who left an immense impact on the Arts community.

I didn’t read the reviews beforehand because I am familiar with the storyline; it was Mozart's last piece of work and is more than love, but about overcoming trials in life with themes of enlightened philosophy. I appreciate its depth and anticipated the traditional show that I’ve seen so many times in various cities, so this playful production, an otherworldly epic featuring incredible opera performers, animated projections, and practical surprises that lead to frequent ripples of laughter, appreciative applause, and was a visual feast before my eyes, I couldn’t have been happier.

Stage director Barrie Kosky and the theater group 1927 created revolutionary staging that is unlike anything encountered before on the operatic stage. It blends the world of silent film with animation.  And the soprano who played Pamina sounded like a bird, and I mean that in the best possible way: clear, melodious, and able to reach high notes that took the audience into another world.

But my joy didn’t stop there.  The next day, I visited the Huntington Gardens & Library. I saw the latest installation, the Australian Garden. I usually don’t have favorites because my taste is broad, but there is something about the Japanese Garden in the hilly terrain that I find comforting.  It makes me want to walk into that tatami room and live there, sort of the reversal of what Mia Farrow encountered in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, to be in another time and another place.