Above: Michael Sumuel, our Papageno today
~ Author: Oberon
Saturday December 20th, 2025 – I’ve enjoyed the Met’s Julie Taymor FLUTE, abbreviated though it is, several times since it premiered. With its large cast of substantial roles, it offers a chance to hear a number of voices in a 90-minute performance; young, upcoming singers often get their first Met opportunities to shine, while established favorites gain new followers.
Presiding in the pit today was James White, who I chanced to meet a few days ago at my favorite Lincoln Center area eatery, Il Violino. His tempi were swift and sure, and he was very supportive of the singers at all times. The score is of course heavily cut; in fact, some passages I especially love – like the “Bei Männern” duet and the Chorus of the Priests – are eliminated. If memory serves, the opening chords of the overture were always played before skipping ahead to the theme of the pursuing dragon, but today these chords were not included. Later in Act I, the slow opening portion of the Queen of the Night’s first aria was likewise eliminated.
This afternoon, two singers I much admire took the romantic leads: soprano Joelle Harvey as Pamina and tenor Paul Appleby as Tamino. I’d just recently heard both of them in a Bach evening at Chamber Music Society, and, earlier this season, the tenor had given us a sterling Don Ottavio at The Met.
Ms. Harvey and Mr. Appleby were both on fine form today, with wonderfully clear and nuanced singing, and excellent diction to boot. The three Ladies were likewise enjoyable to hear: Tessa McQueen, Edyta Kulczak, and Megan Esther Grey blended well and made much of their comic spoken lines.
Rainelle Krause, a recent Met debutante, has sung the Queen of Night frequently in her career to date. I can’t understand why the first aria’s opening slow passage was not sung today, but once Ms. Krause turned her attention to the aria’s florid “cabaletta” she was right at home, her high notes brilliant and her top-F spot-on. Later, in her vengeance aria, the soprano touched lightly but skillfully on the high-F’s and then scored a knockout with a sustained, titanic high B-flat on “Swear!” Her solo bow at the opera’s end drew massive applause and loud cheers.
Mr. Appleby’s encounter with The Speaker (Harold Wilson, strong of voice and verbally telling) made this, my favorite scene of the opera, especially savourable today. Mr. Appleby’s mystified “O endless night!” spoke of Tamino’s despair, but soon the magic flute (played today by Seth Morris) sets things to rights.
The boy sopranos playing the Three Spirits today seemed to be vocally more polished than some previous trios in this production, though they ran into some pitchiness later in the show. Tom Capobiano, a scene-stealing, voicey Monastatos, constantly causing trouble, met his match when he and his mean-spirited sidekicks fell under the spell of Papageno’s magic music box, which caused them to dance blithely into the wings.
Pamina’s luminous “Be truthful...” and her defense of her attempted escape found great beauty in Ms. Harvey’s vocalism; her forlorn aria was so expressively sung that the cuts made in it were all the more maddening.
A hit last season in his Met debut role as Colline in LA BOHEME, Hungarian-Romanian basso Alexander Köpeczi was back on our stage today as Sarastro, singing with power and warmth, his English quite clear, the handsomeness of his timbre undeniable.
Pamina and Tamino undergo their trials, Ms. Harvey’s “Tamino mine!” melting my heart. The Queen and her henchmen are cast down, love conquers all, and Sarastro praises the power of truth and light.
With all these fine singers onstage, it was quite an accomplishment for Michael Sumuel’s Papageno to steal the show, but that is just what he did. I’d heard him once before, in Massenet’s CENDRILLON, and was genuinely impressed today by the power of his voice, the clarity of his diction, and how he played for laughs whilst never going overboard. He latched onto all the comic possibilities along the way, especially the echo effect he produced whilst stumbling around in the darkness. His “Männchen oder Weibchen“, or whatever is goes by in English, was so entertaining that I regretted the repeat had been cut. And his ‘suicide scene’ was both amusing and touching, as it should be. Finally winning his Papagena, played by Emma Marchefka from the Met’s Young Artist program, Mr. Sumuel also won the hearts of the nearly 3800 people in the hall, who gave him an affectionate ovation.
The afternoon sped by, but despite the pleasure I drew from most of the music-making, the distractions caused by an audience that included scores of small children really infringed on my concentration today. Of course, having seen this Taymor show numerous times, I expected the atmosphere to be what it was. But it was more annoying than at any previous FLUTE I’d attended, with a continual undercurrent of whimpering voices, people eating potato chips from a crinkly bag, and one child who talked loudly throughout the entire second act…these really put a damper on things.
I have another FLUTE is two weeks, with a different cast; that might be my last visit to Taymorland, much as I’ve liked being there.
~ Oberon
Oberon's Glade 