Florida Grand Opera wants to know: what would you do for love?
Would you go on an epic quest? Drink a love potion of dubious origin? Endure prison for the sake of a cruel but alluring gypsy woman? The three ambitious productions chosen by FGO for its 83rd season- The Magic Flute, The Elixir of Love, and Carmen– invite its audiences to explore all three.
For an art form with origins in the Renaissance, the real question becomes how to make something that’s old feel new, relevant, and fresh to modern audiences.
Their season opener, The Magic Flute, has promised this in spades by approaching this classic Mozart fever dream fantasy from the perspective of–wait for it–role playing games.
If you’re familiar with the storyline, this pairing makes sense: rescue the princess, magical tools to help on your journey, feats of bravery to prove yourself worthy, a dude dressed up like a bird. If you’re not familiar with the opera, and you just like RPG in your spare time, this could open up a whole new world of cultural experiences for you.
The production promises to be immersive and imaginative; the opera will use digital technology and projections as part of the set design.
Florida Grand Opera and The Magic Flute
For more on how the merging of role play and opera came about, The Jitney spoke with Jeffrey Marc Buchman, the director of the production for the Florida Grand Opera.
“I decided to see these parallels between these two worlds and thought wow this would be a beautiful way to tell the story. There’s so many people now that have participated in D&D role-playing games. They’ll totally get this right away. Those who haven’t will also get the idea of pulling in through people’s imagination. It felt like a mechanism that would work beautifully and it feels very modern.”
Furthermore, The Magic Flute infamously has so many scene changes: a mountain, a temple, a palace, a garden.
“The Magic Flute is so fluid in that way. It goes from place to place,” explains Buchman. “How am I taking us from place to place? We’re doing a multi-layered approach.”
He also said that the libretto had been translated into English, but the arias would still be performed in the original German.
The English translations, according to Buchman, have taken some liberties with the storyline. We can’t speak more without revealing spoilers, but we’re going to get a feminine forward version of The Magic Flute. One that puts the women forward as potential leaders and not just as matrimonial objects.
Hear that, Mozart? A feminist flute. Yes, girls play D & D too.
What to Expect at the Opera: A Beginner’s Guide
People dress up nice.
They really go all out. This is not a t-shirt and jeans kind of crowd. Invoke your inner Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Get glamorous, this is your shot to be fancy.
The sets and costumes can be transportive.
It’s fantasy travel and time travel at its best. You may be sitting at the Arsht Center but think you’re outside a temple, in a small village, or on the outskirts of Spain.
There are subtitles projected over the stage- at the opera they’re called supertitles- that help you understand the libretto and storyline. Read them. Take advantage of them. This season alone we have The Magic Flute which is written in German, The Elixir Of Love which is in Italian, and Carmen in French. Even if you were some prodigious polyglot who spoke multiple languages, the vibrato typical of opera singing makes the language challenging to understand. And the storylines are nuanced and interesting and worth following.
If the storyline doesn’t get you, the music might. There is a high chance you attend the opera and hear a line and think, “oh, I’ve heard that before,” and then fall into a wormhole of memory trying to remember which movie or pop culture moment utilized it to their advantage (for example: the opening of Act 2 in Carmen is the soundtrack for a popular scene in There’s Something About Mary. Julia Roberts gorges on pasta in Eat, Pray, Love to sound of the Queen of the Night Aria from The Magic Flute).
Just go with it, the wormhole is fun.
You’re more familiar with opera than you probably think you are.
For more info and tickets click here.
This article was published in part with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.
