Mozart - The Magic Flute - "Zu Hilfe! Zu Hilfe!" (Araizia)

Francisco Araiza as Tamino

First Lady--Juliana Gondek
Second Lady--Mimi Lerner
Third Lady--Judith Christin

Tho the great performer is the conductor and orchestra! And I'm so used to hearing
this after the overture, I just had to post it too.

This production was designed by David Hockney.

"Die Zauberflöte is a rescue opera in which the hero arrives on the scene himself crying for help, trembling in fear, and fainting dead away. "Help! Help! Or else I am lost! . . . Ah, save me!"--this is a strange text for a chivalric hero. He has a bow but no arrows, yet despite his defenselessness he is chosen as the perfect knight, now armed with only a magic flute, to rescue Pamina. It is not Prince Tamino but the timorous bird catcher Papageno who twice saves Pamina from rape; and it is Papgeno not Tamino who sings the great love duet with her, "Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen." An old crone says her age is eighteen years and two minutes; she turns out to be Papagena. The unpreparedness of these reversals, improbabilities, unmaskings, and remaskings is what is so startling, like turning over a card, switching a lamp on and off, changing light into darkness and back again. Appropriately, the overarching design of the opera embodies the transition from star-flaming night to brilliant sun"

----Maynard Solomon: "Mozart A Life". 1995


on the Late Mimi Lerner, from the Boston Globe:

Mimi Lerner, an internationally renowned mezzo-soprano and educator who came to the operatic stage late in life, died on March 29, 2007, in Pittsburgh. She was 61.


The cause was complications of a heart tumor diagnosed 12 years ago, said her husband, Martin.

Ms. Lerner's career as a performer was not conventional and began as a passionate hobby. She was a music teacher in public schools in Pittsburgh for several years before she received her master's degree in voice at Carnegie Mellon University in 1975. She sang in choirs and recitals and eventually progressed to performing in small opera houses. She graduated to bigger opera houses with her debut performance at New York City Opera on Nov. 6, 1979, singing the role of Sextus in "La Clemenza Di Tito."

Ms. Lerner was recognized for her stage presence and her ability to act, on and off the operatic stage.

She was born Emilia Lipczer in Poland in 1946 to Jewish parents who fled the Nazis and lived in the woods until Ms. Lerner was a year old, Martin Lerner said. The family then moved to Paris and immigrated to the Bronx seven years later.

Ms. Lerner attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and graduated from Queens College with a bachelor's degree in music education.

She met her husband, a flutist, during one of his performances at Carnegie Hall in 1967 and moved to Pittsburgh with him in 1969, soon after graduation.

Ms. Lerner was the head of the voice department at Carnegie Mellon University until 2005, when she started teaching at home because of her illness. She was also a cantorial soloist for Rodef Shalom Temple in Pittsburgh for 25 years.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• araiza
• flute
• levine
• mozart
• opera
• overture
• Zauberflöte

[penguinsscareme]

The "composer" has been dead for a long, long, long time. Like even longer than Kurt Cobain.

[begun101]

free masons stand up

[dominoes37]

Giant Snakes? Magic Flutes? Ridiculous Libretti!!

- Constanze

[sycarton1]

never knew killing a dragon was so easy...

[god7man]

I really like these three ladies! :) well done!

[thomasdouglas]

Mimi Lerner (2nd lady) is all over the acting of this. What a communicator.

[TheGracefulDead]

This looks so like Bergman's version...

[DreiKnaben1]

3 people want the snake to eat Tamino.

[hotSarah99]

also echt schnur bin so alleine und angeödet will sanft gekrault werden hab auch fotos

[131314]

I love that even though the ladies are all a little bit older they all just exude this teen girl crush on tamino, they are very good actors, giving us a bit of comedy as they sing, ive seen a lot of singers just stand in one place and sing to the audience

[Terrakinetic]

The composer's face instantly made me think, "that must be what Curly would look like if he were an intellectual."

[waynerchris]

I just got done doing this! I Was Tamino!