Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Mozart: Les Mystères d'Isis

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Question: when is a Mozart opera not a Mozart opera? Answer: when it's Les Mystères d'Isis, an adaptation of "The Magic Flute" (1791) for an 1801 production in Paris. A music-master from Bohemia, Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith (1746-1820) is credited as a composer of this pastiche (or is it a travesty?). He retained many of the well-known numbers from the original Singspiel, but cut the glorious coloratura revenge aria of the Queen of the Night. Lachnith kept the famous overture intact. He also inserted his adaptations of arias from other Mozart operas and composed sung recitatives to replace these spoken German dialogue. The new French libretto of "The Mysteries of Isis" changed the names of some of the familiar characters of "The Magic Flute," and tweaked the story line, too. The result of all these alterations is a lyric stagework that only vaguely resembles Mozart's Masonic opera.

Parisians had to wait until 1829 to experience Die Zauberflöte as Wolfgang Amadeus actually wrote it. Les Mystères d'Isis was revived repeatedly after 1801. The beauty of Mozart's music insured its popularity. So how good is Lachnith's adaptation? Judge for yourself by listening to the Spanish Glossa label's two-CD release from last year of Les Mystères. It was recorded at the Salle Pleyel in Paris in 2013. Diego Fasolis directs the period instrument players of Le Concert Spirituel and the Flemish Radio Choir with a cast of 11 vocal soloists.