![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Adults gather obediently on lawn chairs, which face a makeshift stage that sees processions of all stripes of adorable animal. The premise is that the opera's story is a backyard play (put on ostensibly for children and their families). The '60s are one of those decades in American history that the President-elect was thinking of when he decided to “make the country great again”, and the feeling that the set wants to evoke relies on the same foggy fantasy that the slogan promises. According to the program, the production is set in a "backyard near you", projecting the universal locus of childhood as predominantly white, suburban and middle-class. ![]() The set returns us to what looks like the 1960s, but it's also politically current. Revisionist stagings of classic operas tend toward alienation effects, but this one goes all-in on the opposite: it's a rare concept that reaches for the heartstrings, and tugs hard. When the curtain rises on the Lyric Opera's new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, directed by Neil Armfield and with set by Dale Ferguson, we see not fantastic dragons or enchanted landscapes but something far more mythical: a big, white-panelled house, with glimpses (as it rotates) of copper cookware in the kitchen and children running in the yard. ![]()
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