Call it the elixir of youth, perhaps – though not the kind that comes in a bottle. Having survived a serious bout with stomach cancer six years ago, the conductor Claudio Abbado turned to the next generation of musicians to inspire him. In Edinburgh four years ago he electrified the Festival with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Wagner’s Parsifal. Now back with the band’s most talented graduates, who comprise the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the 73-year-old maestro seemed even frailer, but conducted with an irresistible combination of life-enhancing vigour and noble dignity.
It’s that very same balance that is the key to Mozart’s Magic Flute, and whatever the shortcomings of this particular production (by Daniele Abbado, Claudio’s son), they were a price worth paying to have the conductor back in Edinburgh. The overture sprang into life, cracklingly well-played and full of textural detail. The broad comedy was lovingly teased out — Abbado wasn’t afraid of making some rude sounds with the MCO’s romping brass — but there was still plenty of room for wistful yearning and warm tenderness.
And binding it all together was an almost transcendent awareness of the bigger themes. At the most sincere and vital moments in the score — the first meeting of Pamina and Tamino, the wise pronouncements of the noble Sarastro — Abbado found a “third way” between stodgy grandeur and fleet- footed energy to get to the heart of what The Magic Flute is really saying: life is something worth celebrating.
He also got the very best out of his young cast. The American tenor Eric Cutler was an exceptionally heroic Tamino, singing with muscular heft but still able to scale down to a shy, lovesick whisper. Erika Miklósa’s awesome Queen of the Night sang the first of her two daunting arias with disarmingly girlish enthusiasm — and then spit out the second in a barrage of deadly coloratura. Georg Zeppenfeld’s compassionate Sarastro was a more virile high priest than usual, and his supple bass made for a refreshing alternative.
After a shaky start the trio of boys, drawn from the august Tölzer Knabenchor, offered some impressively pure and refined tone. Others admittedly found it harder to punch through the flimsy stagecraft offered up by the younger Abbado, who largely left the cast to their own devices while concentrating on a handful of (not very) arresting tableaux, most of which looked feeble on the large stage of the Festival Theatre. Andrea Concetti’ s underdone Papageno lacked charm; Julia Kleiter’s tentative Pamina was often sweet and affecting despite the odd uncertainty. But what was lacking on stage was more than made up for in the glow coming from the pit: the sunshine of an astonishing Indian summer.