Album: Rene Jacobs, Mozart: The Magic Flute (Harmonia Mundi)

René Jacobs ongoing coverage of the entire Mozart opera oeuvre continues with The Magic Flute, performed as usual with the RIAS Kammerchor and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

The principal singers inhabit their roles as persuasively as possible for such an absurdly mythopoeic fairytale, with Daniel Behle a noble Tamino and baritone Daniel Schmutzhard particularly effective as Papageno. But there's a problem, rooted in Jacobs' faithful presentation of Schikaneder's singspiel libretto, the dialogue for which is at times so quietly reproduced as to be barely audible – which makes the first half of each Act, heavy with exposition, rather tough going before their subsequent resolutions.

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