Lucy Gellman Photo
At Worthington Hooker Middle School, Prince Tamino was fighting his way through the thick and gnarly brush of an enchanted forest, the ground beneath him quaking as the wood’s slimiest and most nefarious inhabitants — the Queen of the Night and her three top stunners — watched him fumble and fret. By his side, Papageno the bird catcher cowered. Were they done for after all?
And then, in a moment of divine — or at least, seriously magic — intervention, Tamino invoked a talisman known to ward off all evil: a small, rough-hewn pan flute strung around his neck, sweet and entrancing enough to keep the Queen and her small but malevolent army at bay.
By now, this plot — the beginning of W.A. Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) of 1791 — is well known by music enthusiasts and operagoers around the world. But there was something different about this performance, filling the school’s auditorium with round, velvety sound as the New Haven Chamber Orchestra entered the second half of their 2015 Winter Concert on March 7.
For many members of the audience, it would soon be nap time.
That’s because the NHCO’s Winter Concert is, in member Jessica Sack’s terms, “a concert for all with families in mind.” As a violinist with the orchestra and president of its board of directors, Sack holds accessibility to music to a gold standard. There’s nothing quite like it, she has explained multiple times, and she wants to be part of opening up the field in a big, mellifluous way.
“You get this incredible buildup, and then climax and resolution … it’s music as narrative. That’s really exciting … this is our first concert that has singers in it, and it’s been enjoyable to watch the coming together process as we’ve been working on it. It’s just been so much fun … last Tuesday we were rehearsing in spite of the snow, and I looked around, and people were smiling as they were playing. There’s something absolutely enjoyable … you have to smile,” she said in an interview before the performance.
To make it so, the group, led by conductor Heejung Park, chose pieces that would appeal to kids of all ages, from the very youngest listeners to the grandparents in the audience. As in last year’s pairing of Engelbert Humperdinck and Maurice Ravel, this year’s chosen composers sprang to life as children perked up in their seats, walked wide-eyed and open-eared (if not sure-footed) toward the front of the auditorium, and opened Magic Flute-themed books that were given away for free during and after the concert.
The group’s aim didn’t fall short. A selection of three pieces — Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major (Pastoral), excerpts from Mozart’s Magic Flute, and a medley of American folksongs arranged by Park — struck the audience will full, refreshingly digestible force, capturing Sack’s ideal art of “telling a story through music” as it played out on the stage.
The Pastoral, for instance, really is one of the best pieces to introduce young people to music, as it flows, in five seamless movements, through a day in the country to a storm and its resolution.
And then there was the Mozart, thrilling for audience members of all ages to watch as Meechot Marrero and Samuel Hinkle, two students of the Yale Opera Program, switched roles with minimal costume changes and maximal panache — Tamino to Papageno to Sarastro, the ostensibly evil sorcerer; Queen of the Night to Pamina to Papagena — to bring an abridged version to the audience before they snuggled in for an afternoon nap.
Sound cute? Also near-riveting and completely enchanting. Aided by writer and photographer Oana Sanziana Marian and the orchestra, the two operatic vocalists brought the opera to life in the relatively spare auditorium as Park conducted wildly behind them and a few attendees wiggled, danced, and leaned forward from their seats.
In the week leading up to the concert, I had caught Sack between rehearsals and her work as an educator at the Yale University Art Gallery, and asked her what she most hoped pint-sized Elm Citizens would come away with at the end of the concert.
“I want them to see a concert as something that’s fun, but I also hope that they make connections between the pieces,” she’d said.
That Saturday, a small girl dressed as Belle bounced in the front row, transfixed as Marrero and Hinkle sang their last love song to each other as Papagena and Papageno. A boy near the back nestled into his mother’s arms at the happy ending. A small body in the third row began to applaud prematurely.
Nobody minded at all.
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