Ensemble OrQuesta were back in London for a production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute with libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. Running for just under 3 hours (including interval), this was a change from the shorter Dido and Aeneas chamber opera they performed earlier in the month at the Arcola Theatre for the Grimeborn Opera Festival.
Márcio da Silva led both the staging and musical direction for OrQuesta, with six musicians from the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra providing a compact but impressively cohesive ensemble. Tucked into the corner of the space, they nonetheless delivered a consistently competent performance.
Da Silva’s dual role meant he was frequently twisting between singers and orchestra, and at times the coordination showed the strain. There were a few moments of audible “catch‑up”, where the timing briefly slipped before settling again, though the overall musical delivery remained intact.
This is an opera in two acts with both singing and spoken dialogue, known as Singspiel. It’s fair to say that this cast did a great job musically, with most of the libretto sung in German and the dialogue in English, but it’s the spoken sections where the show falls down. Occasional stumbled lines and wooden delivery did not match the wonderful sung part of the opera.
In The Magic Flute, the Queen of the Night urges Prince Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina from the supposedly tyrannical high priest Sarastro. Instead, Tamino discovers the noble ideals of Sarastro’s enlightened community and seeks to become part of it. Both Tamino and Pamina, first apart and then united, endure demanding initiation trials that ultimately lead to their triumph, while the Queen and her followers are defeated. It is known to be a bonkers story, and OrQuesta made the most of this using physicality, acting, puppetry and some amazing costumes to take this to another level of creativity.
This production could almost have been dubbed “the barefoot opera”, with all 17 cast members—and the six children—performing entirely barefoot. I find this trend increasingly common and, if I’m honest, rather unsettling; it introduces a casualness that doesn’t always sit comfortably with the formality of opera. That said, the children were outstanding. Their focus, confidence, musicality and puppetry lifted every scene they were in, and they quite rightly received enthusiastic applause at the curtain call.
Papageno, played by Flavio Lauria, made a lively entrance, whistling his way through the auditorium—a charming touch at first, though it began to feel a little overused by the end of the evening. Lauria, a bass‑baritone with a substantial role, handled the musical elements capably, but the spoken comic dialogue proved less successful. The humour never quite landed.
The tenor John Twitchen does a good job as Tamino and delivers his role with clarity and emotion. The role of Pamina is shared between Anna‑Luise Wagner and Helen May, with May taking the opening night. May, a lyric soprano of real polish, delivered the role with poise. She is a class act but, in this opera, the standout star of the show is coloratura soprano Juliet Petrus as Queen of the Night. Although she only has two arias, she dominated the performance with her crystal-clear tone and precision, in which she delivered ‘Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen’ – it was breathtaking.
The opera’s treatment of race and gender shows its age: Monostatos’s desire for a “white‑skinned” woman and Papageno’s casual wish to “have a trap for all the girls” are relics of the social attitudes of 1791. In a modern production, these themes feel conspicuously outdated, creating moments that jar against contemporary expectations of inclusivity and respect.
Ensemble OrQuesta, a London‑based company committed to baroque and classical repertoire and known for drawing together emerging and established artists from across the UK and Europe, took a distinctly playful approach here. The production leaned towards pantomime, even brushing up against a Gilbert & Sullivan style of humour. It was a bold creative punt that made the evening enjoyable in its own way, but the spoken acting ultimately let the concept down; the dialogue never matched the musical quality, leaving the dramatic balance uneven. The opera ultimately ran nearly thirty minutes over, underscoring the extent to which the production needs tighter pacing.
Review by Fiona Gilbert
The Magic Flute holds many mysteries and raises many questions.
Ultimately, the answers lie in the charm and sublime beauty of Mozart’s music. Join Ensemble OrQuesta for a production that explores fantasy, reality and duality while giving free rein to wit, knockabout comedy and the dazzling outbursts of the Queen of the Night.
In characteristic style, Ensemble OrQuesta achieves a fusion of inventive physical theatre, starkly poetic imagery, captivating vocal performance and the exhilarating sonorities of period instruments.
John Twitchen – Tamino
Flávio Lauria – Papageno
Anna-Luise Wagner – Pamina
Helen May – Pamina
Juliet Petrus – Queen of the Night
Vedat Dalgiran – Sarastro
Rosemary Carlton-Willis – 1st Lady
Jordan Gascoigne – 2nd Lady
Juliet Telford – 3rd Lady
Predrag Gosta – Monostatos
Jay Rockwell – Speaker
Jasmin Kirsch-Veszell – Papagena
HPO Songbirds – Three Boys
Marcio da Silva – Stage / Music Director / Conductor
Kieran Staub – Conductor
Jay Rockwell – Assistant Director
Marjorie Lemos – Stage Manager
Orlando Bishop – Puppeteer / Technician
THE MAGIC FLUTE
Arcola Theatre
25 to 29 August 2026
