Review: Yuval Sharon brings his L.A. brand of controversy to Berlin with a new ‘Magic Flute’

Music Critic What happens when a feisty young Los Angeles opera director mixes Mozart’s cherished “The Magic Flute” — so beloved that all three of Berlin’s opera companies keep it in repertory year in and year out — with manga and marionette theater? What reportedly did happen on opening night last month of Yuval Sharon’s controversial-to-say-the-least new production of “Die Zauberflöte,” to give its proper German title, is this: An enraged Staatsoper audience began booing during the first act, and critics pretty much agreed that Berlin’s most important opera company had an unthinkable disaster musically, theatrically, visually and, most of all, conceptually. She was said to be incapable of something so basic as keeping the overture’s three opening chords together, let alone of synchronizing the orchestra with the singers. Sharon, who is the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s artist-collaborator, high-tailed it out of town after opening night to oversee Janet Cardiff’s Walt Disney Concert Hall art installation, another of the orchestra’s centennial season innovations.