‘Flute’ of Fancy

“The Magic Flute” is the opera, and maybe the only opera, for everyone. There is no comedy too low to which it doesn’t gladly stoop. Yet there is no issue too high-minded that it hesitates to address. It is an opera of radiant spirituality and also an amusing fairy tale. It flinches from neither daily life nor arcane mysticism. It sees humanity accurately as both buoyant and dark. It is the ideal to which even the popular video game Myst aspires. And, of course, it’s got some of Mozart’s best music.

Rare is the production of “The Magic Flute” that doesn’t work on some level, but far rarer still is the one that does on many--to say nothing of all--levels. L.A. Opera, which returned its 1993 production to the repertory Friday night, has chosen to concentrate on the level of fancy. It is justifiably proud of the designs by illustrator Gerald Scarfe and has often used them as a symbol for the company.

Scarfe exalts in the whimsy of the opera, and he turns the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage into a very merry place. Colors and shapes are lavish, and the animals he creates are the most bewitching this side of Broadway’s “The Lion King.”

That’s one properly delightful aspect of “The Magic Flute,” but it is the only one found here. Peter Hall--whose production this is (although it is now staged by Paul L. King)--offers little human texture to all this cartoon antiquity and indeed even seems to be making a statement about not doing so. It pays to remember that a couple of years before staging this production, Hall resigned as artistic director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera in protest to a Peter Sellars production of “The Magic Flute.” Sellars had jettisoned the opera’s dialogue and set it in contemporary Los Angeles, seeking redemption among the underbelly of our drug culture.

Instead, Hall and Scarfe avoid the dark of the real world altogether and offer a bright cartoon. Next to the animals, the humans--good-guy stick figures or preposterously grotesque villains--are far less interesting or amusing.

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In fact, it is up to the singers themselves to bring something more into this production, and the one who does it most effectively is Wolfgang Holzmair. Best known as a suave singer of lieder, he proved an equally, if unlikely, suave Papageno. And since Holzmair boasts too smooth a baritone to ever sound the traditional buffoon, he was instead an affably understated but not under-interpreted bird catcher with an untapped potential for nobility. In this he was matched, especially vocally, by Gwendolyn Bradley, a very pretty-sounding Pamina.

Perhaps the other singers would have come more to life, as well, with a little more help from Julius Rudel in the pit. Rudel has all the experience in the world as both a Mozartean and a man of the theater, but he can get sleepy. Sally Wolf had to sing the Queen of the Night’s first aria not only with both hands literally tied behind her back (chained to a moon on high) but with Rudel holding her back musically as well. Later, freed of the physical chains and with a little conductorial cooperation, she proved a powerful voice, if hardly a compelling character.

The Tamino was Greg Fedderly, who seems to be just about everywhere these days and impressively so. This time, one can only assume it was too much makeup and too little direction that made him seem merely stalwart. He also seemed a bit hoarse on this night. Kenneth Cox offered a lyric but priestly, imposing Sarasto. Kurt Ollmann, a fine and characterful singer, was wasted as the Speaker. Stephen Goldstein was unusual as Monostatos, interestingly sleazy rather than merely vile.

L.A. Opera has become a good ensemble company lately, and “The Magic Flute” is a good opera to show that off, what with its ensembles of various ladies, boys, armored men, priests and slaves. But this was a night for the animals.

* “The Magic Flute,” Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. Tuesday and Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, 1 p.m.; Feb. 24 and 26, March 1, 7:30 p.m. $24-$135. (213) 365-3500.