The Magic Flute

Last night my mother and I went to the Estates Theater, part of the Czech National Theater, where my mother saw her very first opera: Mozart's The Magic Flute. Appropriate since we just watched the movie Amadeus earlier this week which includes some of the production of it (premier 2 months prior to Mozart's death). I got my mom to rent Amadeus from Blockbuster before flying out here -- not because we were going to see "The Magic Flute", but because I found out that much of it was filmed here in Prague. Yes, I'm a little nerdy. :-) Anyway, at least Amadeus prepared me for the fact that this opera would be pretty absurb, though I was still surprised. A very strange story.


I was a little disappointed by the quality of the performance actually, though my mother didn't notice anything so it's probably because at years of performing, my ear is pretty sensitive to issues with pitch, etc. Anyway, everything was good, but just not as good as I would have expected in Prague, city of classical music and city of Mozart, and with the National Theater no less. We could have gone to the Czech State Opera house... perhaps that would have been better. The problem was that operas at the CSOH had subtitles only in Czech, while Magic Flute was sung in German with Czech dialog, but had subtitles in German and English. The better for the tourists, which was what more than half of the audience was... which may be why it wasn't quite up to par. Oh well, the price for convenience I guess.