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Mozart gets the hip-hop treatment

Die Zauberflote, the rap version, is not your usual night of Mozart. PHOTO COURTESY OF TAIPEI PHILHARMONIC FOUNDATION

Musical purists may cringe at the thought and Mozart may be turning in his grave, but the Taipei Philharmonic Foundation seems to think it has just what it takes to spruce up the classic comedic opera Die Zauberflote: rap.

The radical tweaking of the original score and script didn't just stop with the imaginative addition of rap, though. Having only preserved the opera's original structure and general storyline, director Dan Cheng-ju (單承矩) has taken extreme liberties by staging the play entirely in Chinese, scrapping certain passages and, in another innovation/aberrance having the evil queen of the night's stage entrance be set to dance music.

The fabled land that is the setting of the play is ripe for this type of playful reworking and in Dan's hands Die Zauberflote has become, by his own description, a musical, as opposed to an opera.

For lead roles, Dan has managed to bring in some of the major local stage talents, such as Na Wei-hsun (那維勳), who won the Golden Bell Award for his supporting role in Love Wasabi, in the role of Papageno, and Huang Hsuan-wen (黃絢雯) in the role of the queen of the night. Wu Chih-chieh (吳至傑) will play the role of Monostatos, and in case anyone had to guess, he's the one who raps.

Die Zauberflote will be performed at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall tonight, tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday at 7:30pm, with a matinee show Sunday at 2:30pm. Tickets cost between NT$400 and NT$1,500 and can be purchased through Acer ticketing. The Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall is located at 505, Renai Rd, Sec 4, Taipei (台北市仁愛路4段505號).?
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