Franz-Josef Selig reviews

This is Covent Garden’s latest Magic Flute production, filmed in January. It’s a mixed bag, hard to recommend as a total Flute experience over other DVDs already available. For one component part, though, it’s a must-have. Simon Keenlyside’s Papageno offers none of the vaudeville high jinks traditionally associated with the role: he brings to its comedy a Pierrot lunaire-like poetry, precisely achieved down to the smallest detail. This Papageno arouses both delight and poignant emotions, and his singing is wonderfully strong and true in style.

A full decade has elapsed since John Eliot Gardiner's award-winning recording for Archiv set a new standard for interpreting the St Matthew Passion. Although a 'historically aware' account, it was (with hindsight) sufficiently expressive and dramatically engaged to win the affections of those suckled on Furtwängler, Klemperer, or Karajan: even they would dissent from the appalled old noblewoman at an early performance who likened the work to ‘an Opera Comedy’.