Flowery Flute

Artist Marc Chagall believes in "God, Mozart and color." The Metropolitan Opera's Rudolf Bing believes in Mozart, Chagall and boxoffice. Thus, when the Met scheduled a new production of The Magic Flute, it seemed only right that the 79-year-old Chagall should design the sets and costumes. No matter that he had never before tried his hand at opera; The Magic Flute is fantasy, and in that misty, mystical medium Chagall is the original beautiful dreamer. "He is so very right for it," said Bing.

But Bing was so very wrong. There are two fundamental ways of approaching The Magic Flute: either as a symbolic, deeply philosophical work, as Oskar Kokoschka attempted (unsuccessfully) in his stolidly realistic sets for the Lyric Opera of Chicago in November; or as straight fairy tale, as Beni Montresor tried (successfully) in his lavish scenery for the New York City Opera in October. Chagall strove to incorporate both approaches and achieved neither. He viewed the opera in terms of color, reiterating that the total effect of the scenery should be "like a bouquet of flowers." When the opera finally opened last week, Chagall's bouquet bloomed stunningly, but the opera itself was lost in the undergrowth.

Sissy Prince. From the outset, it was apparent that what Chagall had conceived was not so much background scenery but foreground commentary, much of it highly personal. The curtain opened on a great swirling storm of colors, which, as the massive backdrops rose and fell through 16 scenes, rolled across the footlights in rainbow waves. And awash in it all were the familiar Chagall symbols: floating maidens, topsy-turvy trees, horned animals, bursting suns and moons, and all manner of creepy crawlers and little winged things.

In one scene, the beasties from Marc's ark came alive onstage, looking less like walking symbols than strays from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade; the "treacherous serpent" called for in the first act emerged as a big, cuddly, bloated worm with eight eyes, a dangling red tongue and the initials "M.C." prominently inscribed on one of its ears. It was a charming but slightly ludicrous moment, for it made the dauntless prince look like a sissy as he ran away in a cold fright.

The libretto's demands are preposterous enough: the theme derives from the ethics and rituals of Freemasonry as practiced in ancient Egypt. But Chagall's temple scenes, peopled with a host of priests clothed in garish colors, came off as something resembling a psychedelic initiation rite at the local Masonic temple.

The cast, looking vaguely lost in Chagall's vast fantascapes, nonetheless performed elegantly. Mozart Specialist Josef Krips conducted manfully against the visual competition, and Baritone Hermann Prey's comical Papageno was as close to a show stealer as the conditions would permit. Chagall's whimsical spectacular notwithstanding, there was too much art and not enough Mozart.

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