I was going to rain down death, despair and the vengeance of hell, soprano style, on you today, but that seemed like a bit much for a Monday morning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, I’m going to give you the Queen of the Night’s other aria, in which she persuades and even seduces the young and extremely persuadable tenor, Tamino, to her cause.\u00a0 You can always go hunting for hell’s boiling vengeance later.<\/p>\n
[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ov1hRqPnm58&w=560&h=315]<\/p>\n
This is Diane Damrau’s version, which is very dramatic and sincere, and also utterly gorgeous.\u00a0 I had a lot of trouble choosing a version of this today, because I also utterly adore what Natalie Dessay<\/a> does with the role.\u00a0\u00a0 Diane Damrau is despairing and determined and clinging to Tamino to make him do her bidding, where Natalie Dessay is deliberately seductive, singing the aria in front of a portrait of Pamina, and trying, I think, to conflate herself with her daughter in Tamino’s (rather vacant) mind.\u00a0 And then we have Luciana Serra<\/a>, whose portrayal is probably the most tragic and queenly of the three.<\/p>\n In all three cases, the singing is perfect.<\/p>\n I’m currently watching the DVD of Damrau’s version, kindly lent to me by a colleague (who heard me listening to this very aria on my computer at work, oops!), and am finding it very difficult to sit through, to be honest.\u00a0 The singing and acting is excellent, but my God, the sexism is unbelievable!\u00a0 The only live production I’ve seen of The Magic Flute was an abridged version, and while it was still pretty infuriating from a feminist perspective, I don’t remember it containing quite such choice lines as “So a woman beguiled you? A woman does little, chatters a lot!” or “A woman needs a man to guide her.”\u00a0 Charming.<\/p>\n Actually, when I saw the opera I was there with my sister in law, who commented in the interval that Sarastro was really evil – it had not occurred to her that the Queen of the Night was anything other than the heroine of the piece.\u00a0 And really, on the basis of actions up until that point, why would it?\u00a0 Even on the basis of actions after that point, we only really know Sarastro is good because everyone tells us so – his actions do not particularly bear this out.<\/p>\n Oh, fine.\u00a0 This is now officially turning into a feminist rant about how utterly infuriating the sexual politics of The Magic Flute are.\u00a0 Except – thank heavens for the internet – I don’t have to provide said rant, because others have already done it far better than I could<\/a>.<\/p>\n Better still, it turns out that some brilliant person going by the name of Operagasmic<\/a> has written a synopsis, which is possibly the funniest thing I’ve read this week: Act I<\/a> \/ Act II<\/a>.\u00a0 Go.\u00a0 Read.\u00a0 It will reconcile you to the fact that Mozart wrote some of his best music for an opera with a plot that makes me want to bang my head against a wall…<\/p>\n