Opera: Magic and the Globolinks

The Hamburg State Opera under the guidance of Impresario Rolf Liebermann has developed into one of the most creative companies in the world. An opera composer himself (Penelope, School for Wives), Liebermann commissions two new operas a year, lets producers and directors follow their own imaginative flights. Currently, two new productions — a brilliant revival of Mozart's The Magic Flute and the premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's first major stage work in five years — are proving the wisdom of such artistic generosity.

Elfin and Chinese. The Mozart was assigned to Peter Ustinov. Directing a full-length opera for the first time, he tackled The Magic Flute with warnings ringing in his ears. "Some pointed out that it was the most difficult opera of all to stage," said Ustinov. Their point was well taken, since The Magic Flute is a stylistic hodgepodge: there are dazzling coloratura arias, sunny folk songs and slapstick scenes. It is a curious melange, and the fact that it is based on a solemn Masonic morality play only adds to the confusion.

Ustinov succeeded where others had failed by playing the opera, as he put it, for "what's on the surface." It turned out to be a poetic, elfin romp, somewhat in the spirit of Beni Montresor's enchanting 1966 production for the New York City Opera. Said Ustinov: "Too many directors try to make another Parsifal out of The Magic Flute."

He settled on an approach that he compared to Chinese theater. "In the Chinese theater, a man crosses a river without there being a river on the stage," he says. "A work like The Magic Flute should lead everyone to the depth of his own temperament, and so I prefer to have the public imagine the river." There is no river to imagine in Ustinov's Magic Flute, but there is much else. Sarastro's temple of wisdom is suggested by four golden columns and a clear egg-yolk backdrop rather than the usual bombastic temple architecture. The other sets consist primarily of a variety of shrublike trees positioned differently for each scene.

Not everything was left to the operagoer's imagination. The three little boys who act as Tamino's guardian angels arrived and departed in a dirigible. Occasionally, Ustinov indulged in his love of sight gags, and not always to good effect; there were some murmurs from the audience when Papageno made his first entrance from the prompter's box. But Heinz Joachim in Die Welt summed up the critics' response: "At long last the Hamburg State Opera has cleaned out both the antiquated conceptions and modern profundity that block the view of Mozart's Magic Flute"

Total Theater. A space opera for children, Menotti's Help, Help, The Globolinks is as different from his 1951 Christmas pageant Amahl and the Night Visitors as a shepherd is from an astronaut. The plot centers on the invasion of Earth by a race from outer space known as Globolinks. They speak a kind of pidgin-electronese, and their touch can turn a human into a Globolink within 24 hours. Though the Globolinks are immune to man's weapons, it turns out that they are allergic to the sound of music. After a number of close encounters, they are defeated by a band of schoolchildren singing their school victory march.