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I may have gone a little overboard in listening/watching different versions. Note that these are very personal opinions… all you have to do is go on amazon to find people who strenuously disagree with me :)
Note that I do not know German, so cannot remark on that, and I mostly don't pay attention to the dialogue in recordings that contain it. I also have not generally talked about Papageno and not much about Pamina, for the simple reason that pretty much every recording I listened to had awesome singers for both.
First, I want to talk a little about the video recording I liked best, which is available on Youtube here with English subtitles. (I do not yet own this, but in the next Amazon run will buy it.)
BBC (2003): 4/5. Very solid singing and acting in this one. SIMON KEENLYSIDE, as usual, steals the show as Papageno. Dorothea Röschmann is a really great Pamina, very sweet, a very lovely singer, who is very believable in her whole arc; I really like her interpretation. Her acting during and after the Queen's big aria makes my heart break for her. I like Will Hartman very much; I think he believably acts his despair at having to repudiate Pamina, although his voice acting is not nearly as good as Röschmann's. Diana Damrau is a great Queen of the Night, her singing very natural and lovely while still nailing all the notes, although I sort of thought her costuming was a bit over-the-top (it reminded me of the Galadriel scene in the movie version of LOTR).
I liked the direction very much. And an interpretation I haven't seen in the other versions I watched: in the trial scenes where Tamino has to repudiate Pamina, it's awful for him. Really awful. To the extent that when the chorus comes in with a cheering aria after that, it's played more like a dirge, with him on his knees in despair. And when he then tells her to step back ("Zurück!"), it's a cry of despair, like his heart is being torn in two. Which, as far as I'm concerned, it should feel like for him. (In my fic/interpretation, I took this a little farther, where Tamino realizes he should not have repudiated her. I think this production definitely had this as a conscious subtext, though they didn't quite take the last step into making it more explicit.)
As far as I am concerned, this is the video Zauberflöte to get. Of the ones I've seen, I think this is my favorite so far. I don't own it yet, but I will in my next amazon order. The subtitles are not very accurate, as far as I can tell.
Now more than you ever wanted to know about the audio recordings. These are all available on Spotify (which is how I listened to them). ( Solti, Gardiner, Mackerras (Sung in English), Ostman, Abbado, Bohm, Klemperer )
Note that I do not know German, so cannot remark on that, and I mostly don't pay attention to the dialogue in recordings that contain it. I also have not generally talked about Papageno and not much about Pamina, for the simple reason that pretty much every recording I listened to had awesome singers for both.
First, I want to talk a little about the video recording I liked best, which is available on Youtube here with English subtitles. (I do not yet own this, but in the next Amazon run will buy it.)
BBC (2003): 4/5. Very solid singing and acting in this one. SIMON KEENLYSIDE, as usual, steals the show as Papageno. Dorothea Röschmann is a really great Pamina, very sweet, a very lovely singer, who is very believable in her whole arc; I really like her interpretation. Her acting during and after the Queen's big aria makes my heart break for her. I like Will Hartman very much; I think he believably acts his despair at having to repudiate Pamina, although his voice acting is not nearly as good as Röschmann's. Diana Damrau is a great Queen of the Night, her singing very natural and lovely while still nailing all the notes, although I sort of thought her costuming was a bit over-the-top (it reminded me of the Galadriel scene in the movie version of LOTR).
I liked the direction very much. And an interpretation I haven't seen in the other versions I watched: in the trial scenes where Tamino has to repudiate Pamina, it's awful for him. Really awful. To the extent that when the chorus comes in with a cheering aria after that, it's played more like a dirge, with him on his knees in despair. And when he then tells her to step back ("Zurück!"), it's a cry of despair, like his heart is being torn in two. Which, as far as I'm concerned, it should feel like for him. (In my fic/interpretation, I took this a little farther, where Tamino realizes he should not have repudiated her. I think this production definitely had this as a conscious subtext, though they didn't quite take the last step into making it more explicit.)
As far as I am concerned, this is the video Zauberflöte to get. Of the ones I've seen, I think this is my favorite so far. I don't own it yet, but I will in my next amazon order. The subtitles are not very accurate, as far as I can tell.
Now more than you ever wanted to know about the audio recordings. These are all available on Spotify (which is how I listened to them). ( Solti, Gardiner, Mackerras (Sung in English), Ostman, Abbado, Bohm, Klemperer )
