When Binghamton’s Forum Theatre was renovated back in 1975, the first performance on its stage was Mozart’s The Magic Flute, done by Binghamton’s own Tri-Cities Opera (TCO). This year marks the 75th anniversary of TCO, and a new version of the beloved opera serves as a small homage to the company’s legacy.
The Magic Flute has an average runtime of three hours long, but Tri-Cities Opera has shortened it to just one hour for this year’s LUMA Festival. John Rozzoni, TCO’s general director, said he hopes that a bite-sized performance will help make it more approachable for people who haven’t seen an opera before.
“We are always, as a company, trying to break down those barriers, trying to open up sort of the world of opera for this community and beyond, and let people know that opera is for them,” Rozzoni said. “It is so much more than just Italian and Viking horns and all these things that people might associate with opera.”
LUMA, with its light projections and emphasis on the intersection of art and technology, presented TCO with an opportunity to take such a well-known opera in a new direction. Stefanos Koroneos is an opera director from Greece with his own opera company in New York City. As director of the TCO production, he’s creating what he described as a dialogue between light projections and shadows.
“We are creating a land [where] everything lives within a painting,” Koroneos said.” “We are working with a very talented lighting designer who practically is lighting the actors in a certain way so that we not only see them, but we also see the shadows on the floor.”
The shadows will be used to create shapes and forms that almost become their own characters alongside the performers.
Darya Narymanava, a Tri-Cities Opera resident artist, is one of those performers. She plays Papagena and the Third Lady, and she said working with projections adds a whole new level of complexity:
“You have to be very precise,” Narymanava said. “You have to remember every gesture that you made, because you have to be mindful of the work that the lighting designer is doing, the ideas of the director, of course, musical aspect of it, but with all the shapes and forms.”
Even though the opera is much shorter, Narymanava said nothing has been lost, and the human element shines through in what is left.
“We thought, oh, this is very important. We want to tell this. We want to make sure that you see the love. We want to make sure that you see the tenderness. We want to make sure that you see the determination. And I think that it's a great way, by shortening it, it's a great way to highlight.”
Tri-Cities Opera performs The Magic Flute Friday evening at 7:30 p.m. at the Forum Theatre as part of Binghamton’s LUMA Festival, with a separate performance Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. For more information, visit TriCitiesOpera.com.
