The Magic Flute, Animated, at SF Opera

An inventive, animated production of Mozart's The Magic Flute has opened San Francisco Opera's summer season. It was created in 2012 for the Berlin Komische Oper Berlin by Australian director Barry Kosky and British animation/theater company 1927. The production was a huge success and has since toured throughout the world in dozens of theaters. (All production photos are by Cory Weaver.)

The results were mixed for me. Set in a surreal silent film world, the clunky spoken dialogue was replaced with interstitials accompanied by Mozart pianoforte music. This often worked brilliantly but chunks of the story were lost, bewildering any first-time viewer.

The production consists of a blank white wall with constantly animated projections. This makes for beautifully imaginative settings, but unfortunately the animation doesn't know when to stop. Wheels turn and wings flap and flowers bloom incessantly. The oldest upstaging trick in the books is to create movement behind a fellow actor, and here the entire stage is upstaging the poor singers. To add to the artists' problems, most of their appearances are high on the wall on narrow ledges, strapped into harnesses around their waist under their costumes, which only allows for the most restricted of movement.

I also have mixed feelings about The Magic Flute itself. Written soon before his death, the opera contains some of Mozart's most glorious music and more earworms than just about any other opera. The problem is the plot. The fairy tale story starts well, with young Prince Tamino in a forest being given a quest by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina from the wicked wizard Sarastro who has kidnapped her. Tamino hooks up with the comic relief peasant Papageno and with the help of three Ladies and three boy soprano Spirits along with the titular magic flute, they make their way to Sarastro's headquarters. So far so good.

It turns out, however, that the Queen of the Night is feminine evil incarnate (and in this production, a scary spiderwoman besides) and Sarastro is the embodiment of masculine wisdom in an all-male Masonic temple. He's also a big bore who insists that Tamino not speak to women because Sarastro proclaims they are gossips and troublemakers. The sweetness and thrills of the first act turn lugubrious in the second as Prince Tamino goes through an initiation process to prove his purity.

The best news about Tuesday's performance was that San Francisco Opera Music Director Eun Sun Kim turns to be a very good Mozart conductor. Some friends thought she took the tempos too briskly but I thought the orchestra sounded lively and beautiful. She even made the solemn Masonic hymns exciting and the chorus sounded great.

The most impressive singing came from some of the minor roles. Zhengyi Bai as the comically evil Monostatos, decked out here in Nosferatu makeup, was a highlight, and so were the two Armored Men (Adler Fellows Thomas Kinch and James McCarthy) taking Prince Tamino to hell for his Trial by Fire.

The animated projections worked best throughout the trial sequence. It also allowed Amitai Pati as Tamino and Christina Gansch as Pamina to shine together. The singers cast as Sarastro and the Queen of the Night were subpar but the Three Ladies (Olivia Smith, Ashley Dixon, and Maire Therese Carmack) were very fine.

As is often the case, the birdcatcher Papageno steals the show, and baritone Lauri Vasar gave a delightful performance, even being strapped to a wall for most of the night.