“So Take This Magic Flute and Blow. It Will Protect Us As We Go”: Impempe Yomlingo (2007–11) and South Africa’s Ongoing Transition

• Published in: The Opera quarterly 2012-03, Vol.28 (1), p.54-71
• Main Authors: Davies, Sheila Boniface, Davies, J. Q
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Musical theater; Theater criticism; Transitions
• ISSN: 0736-0053; 1476-2870
• DOI: 10.1093/oq/kbs039

Davies and Davies examine the many ways in which Impempe Yomlingo performs transition. Fraught political debates regarding the ongoing transition from apartheid South Africa to the "new" democratic order are inflected in Impempe's portrayal of the turn from the malevolent world of the Queen of the Night to the benevolent dispensation of Sarastro's realm. In this production, that shift in regime is played out in pained, difficult ways. The performers' reading of the score troubles the plot's central or supposedly unproblematic "reversal," to borrow Karol Berger's term for the "break" occurring around midpoint in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera. Transition is played out, too, on the level of Mozart's score and Emanuel Schikaneder's libretto. Through a deliberate process of "indigenization," the opera has been transformed rather than merely adapted. In Impempe Yomlingo this multilingual libretto goes beyond mere translation to include cuts, reordering of scenes, and the introduction of new text. Material transformation, here, underscores the transformative elements of the story on one hand, while enacting a politics of cultural and aesthetic reform on the other.