The Magic Flute (Opera Australia)

There were times you wouldn’t even see them.

You’d squint across the fields toward the horizon and he was all there was. The birds, their magnificent wings alternating between a flutter and an arc, would blend into the dying sunlight as he chased them. But for the noise, you’d almost believe he was alone out there, imagining them all.

The way he spun seemed out of this world: his teenage fingers spread to grab at their tails, his mouth agape in distraction. But the sound, that glorious cacophony which began tuneful and turned atonal as its layers turned and crashed against the buzz of cicadas, it was that sound which made everything okay, for as long as it tumbled through the air we knew he was with joy.

Poor little Gene and his unfathomable talent. We bought him a pipe so he might resemble a child of purpose. He took to it quickly, at first with short playtunes, then graduating to the shrill glissando which called the birds to his fingertips.

But little boys find their chests expanding. Their hearts brim and empty for the companionship of others. While he sat on the rotting carcass of a felled tree, and the birds danced on his horizon, he cried and cried. For days, he wet the soil until it could take no more and a small pool began to form.

After 12 days, it was a puddle. At 36, a small pond. After 74 full days of crying, it was a lake which he sat and wept into, and then he stopped. He allowed the water to become still so he might observe the light dancing upon the smooth surface. The birds were long gone, and the trees had lost their leafs to the gravity of autumnal death. He peered and peered into the reflection until he recognised a face. He squinted until his male features became feminine. He smiled and, as we watched him, dove headfirst into the water and into love, never to be heard from again.

This production, on at the Sydney Opera House until March 23, was reproduced by Opera Australia from the original production of THE MAGIC FLUTE by the Metropolitan Opera, New York.  Translation by J.D. McClatchy. Performed by arrangement with The Metropolitan Opera, publisher and sole copyright holder.