Juilliard offers a hipster Die Zauberflöte.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
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| Next they'll be buying a stroller. Theo Hoffman (right) and Kara Sainz as Papageno and Papagena in Act II of Die Zauberflöte at Juilliard. Photo by Richard Termine for the Juilliard School. |
The wave of gentrification sweeping New York this decade has included the presentation of operas in the most unlikely venues: a Bushwick bus terminal, a Gowanus back alley, even a coffee barge moored at the old Marine terminal in Red Hook. This week, the Juilliard School offered a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte by director Mary Birnbaum. Although mounted in the confines of the Peter Jay Sharp Theater in the school's Lincoln Center home, this new staging has its roots in those aforementioned outlier opera productions and the ideas of contemporary urban renewal.
