Spellbinding Cherry Spell The cherry is one of the most enchanting and magical fruits. Its vibrant red color and sweet taste have made it a symbol of beauty and temptation. In the world of magic, the cherry spell is highly revered and sought after for its potent powers. The cherry spell is a spell that harnesses the energy and magic of cherries to bring about desired outcomes. The spell relies on the belief that cherries hold the power to manifest dreams and desires if used correctly. It is said that when performed properly, the cherry spell can bring love, luck, and prosperity into one's life.
Kenneth branagh magic flute
Sir Kenneth Branagh's retelling of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" with English libretto by Stephen Fry has finally been released and distributed to 150 Emerging Pictures network theaters across the United States and is available as a DVD. The film was first presented in 2006 as part of The Toronto International Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and has played in many European countries. It is the first motion picture version specifically intended for movie theaters. Opera purists might get prickly at the idea of Mozart's well-known fairy-tale piece or Masonic opera (depending on which point of view) as a cinematic adaptation transplanted to the eve of the First World War. Branagh's "Magic Flute" retains Mozart's score in its entirety, with the soundtrack provided by the sensitive artistry of conductor James Conlon and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and features first rate, mostly young singers. The original libretto by Mozart's Masonic Lodge brother, Emanuel Schikaneder, remains for most an enigma. Goethe said of the drama, "More knowledge is required to understand the value of the libretto than to mock it."
Mozart most likely could taste death during the creation of "Die Zauberflöte". The singspiel was premiered in 1791 by Schikaneder's local theater troupe just a few months prior to the composer's death. Mozart, as most of us know (at least from the Peter Schaffer's popular movie "Amadeus") was convinced that he had been poisoned. During that fateful year, an unknown messenger brought a letter without a signature inquiring whether Mozart would undertake to write a Requiem Mass. Mozart had a presentiment of his impending death; the Mass, he assumed, was for himself. Mozart was unafraid of death. In April 1787 he wrote to his father: "As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness."
Branagh's "Flute" catapults the viewer right into combat and death's grip but manages to artfully intersperse magic moments of comic relief, just as singspiel or light opera is meant to do, most notably in the character of Papageno (Benjamin Jay Davis). The overture begins with a dance of war and brutality. Rhythmic outbursts are precisely timed with rapid machine gunfire and explosions. Tamino (Joseph Kaiser) is being pursued by poison gas in the form of a serpent. He cries: "Angel of death has been sent here to kill me, can nobody hear me? I feel it's hot breath. The sharp stink of death." Tamino falls unconscious: "Am I still alive or did a higher power save me?"
Near death experience? Shock? Hallucination? Twilight sleep? Instead of three veiled women coming to the aid of Tamino, as the original libretto calls for, we find three buxom nurses. Masonic references are all but stripped from Branagh's adaptation. Instead we are taken on a harrowing journey through the flames of wartime death and destruction. Along the fantastical trip (could this be Tamino's neurons firing wishful dreams and a jumble of repressed memories of distant love?) we come face to face with the evil Queen of the Night (Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova) singing her famous aria on top of a tank. What unfolds is a gripping battle between the forces of the irrational evil queen and the enlightened values of Sarastro (German bass Rene Papé) as he calls upon Tamino and the object of Tamino's heart, Princess Pamina (Amy Carson) to undergo a set of trials, each one paving the way for the next, which, through their undying love and courage, will bring the war to its end and usher in peace. The flute meanwhile, with its magic properties, protects the couple through each of their ordeals.
In "Die Zauberflöte" Sarastro's character is based on Zoroaster, the king who was said to have invented magic. The eighteenth century went so far as to identify Sarastro with the prophet Ezekiel, others with Nimrod, Moses, and Ham, son of Noah. By contrast, Branagh's Sarastro is down to earth; he dwells in a field hospital rather than a temple, while caring for mutilated bodies and souls of soldiers; ultimately, he prevails as a conjurer of a better world and proves to be a prophet of peace. As Kenneth Branagh makes clear, the universal message and music of "The Magic Flute" need not be for Illuminati only, nor opera elitists, nor a classical music know-it-all, but for every person.
Mozart equated music with magic, for as a child, to play a concerto and work a miracle was one and the same for him. Franz Schubert found in Mozart "comforting perceptions of a brighter and better life." Is it any wonder then that "The Magic Flute" is as vibrant and relevant while being transplanted to the Great War on screen, as it certainly was while set in an eighteenth century European theater?
Branagh’s magical, mistreated ‘Flute’
On JAN. 1, 1975, Swedes huddled around their television sets. The overture of “The Magic Flute” began, and the camera panned across the audience of a Baroque theater, finally landing on a child. Hundreds of thousands of hearts were warmed on that cold Nordic night as the camera periodically returned to the little girl documenting her involvement in Mozart’s opera. Since then, countless more hearts have been warmed by Ingmar Bergman’s “The Magic Flute,” commonly considered the greatest opera film of all time.
Kenneth Branagh’s version of “The Magic Flute,” which he filmed 30 years later as a wacky World War I drama, has not had a similar fate. It was made in 2006 as part of an extensive international celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday. That spring, just as the Salzburg Festival was gearing up to stage every one of Mozart’s 22 operas and when no civilized city with an opera house was without Mozart, Branagh’s film was shown at Cannes, out of competition but with hopes of attracting distribution. It didn’t succeed.
Shown at the Toronto and Venice film festivals four months later, Branagh’s “Flute” was not disliked, but it failed to generate much enthusiasm. Since then the film has had limited release in parts of Europe, Asia and South America and has been moderately well received. French and British DVD versions have been released. But the film has never been shown in the United States, and there is no word about a domestic DVD.
AdvertisementOn a trip to Amsterdam this summer, I spotted in a record-store window a supposedly special three-disc Dutch edition of the film in cheesy packaging being sold at a bargain-basement price. This was not a good sign. But I purchased it.
Now, I am at a loss to understand why this film has been marginalized. Branagh’s “Flute” is a joy.
Nothing about the production, which had a $27-million budget, is marginal. Branagh may not be the hottest name in Hollywood, but he is hardly unknown or without respect. His Shakespeare films are, for me, among the liveliest and certainly the most musical representations of the Bard on the big screen. In his most recent feature, he provides fresh insight into Anthony Shaffer’s 1970 play “Sleuth,” with a sophisticated screenplay by Harold Pinter and pitch-perfect performances by Michael Caine and Jude Law. That film came out a year after the “Flute” and was not neglected. Indeed, the DVD was popular enough that I needed more than one trip to Blockbuster to find a copy.
Similarly, Branagh’s “Flute” fascinatingly re-imagines Mozart’s opera. All the music is intact and excellently conducted by James Conlon, music director of Los Angeles Opera. The English actor and humorist Stephen Fry translated the German libretto into colloquial English and supplied pertinent new dialogue. The cast is attractive. Young characters are played by young singers. Good teeth must have been a priority of the filmmaker.
Branagh’s vision of the Great War is awful and magical at the same time, which is very strange and surely British. The film opens with bright sun, lush fields and bouncy soldiers in the trenches. This is cinema with a smile as big as Bergman’s, but the sweetness doesn’t last. During the overture’s development, soldiers charge, shells blast, bodies fly. No composer dealt with darkness and light quite like Mozart, and Branagh is on continual lookout for every mood flick.
Branagh has a deft touch with Mozartean contrasts between magic and realism. Half fairy tale, half war drama, the film also goes its own way. Sometimes Branagh supplies reason where Mozart relied on fantasy, and other times he takes the opposite route. The dragon becomes threatening poison gas. Papageno is the birdman whose pigeons test the air underground. Actual flutes, though, fly. The Queen of the Night arrives atop a tank and later darts through the sky like a kinky Tinkerbell. Surreal lips fly in space. So do Mary Poppins umbrellas.
AdvertisementVisually, this “Flute” is exuberant if occasionally incongruous. Fluid camera movements are surprising and delightfully musical. The updating is mostly clever, such as by making the three ladies who discover Tamino sexy nurses in flamboyant costumes.
Youth must be served
Conlon spoke the other day about working with Branagh from Chicago, where he was conducting Mozart’s “Abduction From the Seraglio” with the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival. The “Flute” casting, he admitted, required a measure of “hashing it out with Ken and making compromises,” given Branagh’s insistence on very young people for every young role. The conductor did not have the final say.
But clearly Conlon approved of emerging Canadian tenor Joseph Kaiser, a dreamboat Tamino who will appear in the L.A. Opera production of the opera this season. For Pamina, Branagh rejected what Conlon described as several young, attractive and proven singers for an even younger, more beautiful and completely unproven British soprano in her early 20s, just out of school and without a professional resume. There is no question that Amy Carson looks the part. She brings a smoldering sensuality to the screen and a fresh-as-morning-dew voice. I hope she isn’t being pushed into the big time too soon, but her career has been launched and she already has impressive gigs in England.
Rene Pape, today’s bass of choice, is a sonorous, curious, cultish Sarastro who leads the opposing army and sends the captured Tamino on a secret military mission. Tom Rangle, as Monastos, Pamina’s lecherous jailer, is not a comic rapist but appropriately dangerous. Benjamin Jay Davis is Papageno as American good ole boy. Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova is a dazzling Queen of the Night, her quivering lips and vicious teeth shot up close as she reaches her high Ds.
Every director has problems with the symbolism at the end of “The Magic Flute,” especially with making the trials by water and fire feel meaningful. Branagh offers nice touches. The couple are caught in a battlefield and flood. But opera is opera, and Branagh knows better than to artificially tie up all loose ends.
For all his updating, he also trusts Mozart in a refreshingly old-fashioned way. The singers mostly can be understood. Fry’s text is, for all its liberties, singable. But the ensembles and choruses often cannot be understood. Branagh seems not to care. Mozart did not care either. Music’s magic suffers from explanation.
The Dutch special edition DVD is, in fact, the movie and two CDs with a different mix of the performance. The CDs are slightly disappointing. One hears flaws in some of the young singers that don’t register on screen. This really is a film and needs to be seen.
Undoubtedly Branagh’s “Flute” will find its way to DVD in this country someday, and it probably will eventually get on the cinematheque and museum circuits. But it’s already 2 years old, and Hollywood’s attitude toward it is disgraceful.
At a time when filmmakers are being invited into the opera house in record numbers and when the Metropolitan Opera and other companies can sell out HD broadcasts to movie theaters, taking a chance on the “Flute” hardly seems like taking a chance. Lots of movies don’t do well. They’re junk, and everybody knows it from the start. This “Flute,” on the other hand, could be a surprise modest success.
In the meantime, the British and French versions can be ordered online from Amazon and other sites. They require an all-region DVD player, which is a useful gadget for any opera lover, given the quantity of European and Asian opera DVDs not released in the States. Another option is to download one of the programs that remove country coding from discs played on your computer.
Kenneth Branagh presents Mozart's The Magic Flute
Mozart’s classic opera The Magic Flute is breathtakingly transformed in a spectacular new film version conceived and directed by Kenneth Branagh, with a newly-adapted libretto by Stephen Fry. Set during the eve of the first global war a magical drama unfolds as a Tamino, a young soldier sets forth on a perilous journey in pursuit of love, light and peace in a world afflicted by darkness, death and destruction.
An eerie quiet descends over a landscape still untouched by conflict as Tamino waits anxiously with his fellow recruits for the command to go into battle. In the ensuing chaos he is transported to a twilight world caught between dream and nightmare. What follows is a spectacular musical adventure in which the destiny of a pair of young lovers may help determine the fate of nations and the lives of millions.
With musical director James Conlon conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the film showcases opera stars René Pape, Tom Randle, Lyubov Petrova, Silvia Moi, Joseph Kaiser and Amy Carson in a romantic adventure story of humanity and fellowship, weaving drama with comedy.
Branagh “…brings magic and a new life to Mozart.” (Classic FM) A perennial favorite for generations of opera-goers this production is a visually extraordinary cinematic experience that the LA Times called “exuberant!”
Sir Kenneth Branagh will participate in a live video Q&A direct from London immediately following the film. All tickets for this special event are $15.
It is said that when performed properly, the cherry spell can bring love, luck, and prosperity into one's life. To perform the cherry spell, one must gather fresh cherries and select a specific intention or desire. The cherries are then used as a focal point during the spell, allowing the energy of the fruit to intertwine with the desired outcome.
This can be done through various methods such as eating the cherries while visualizing the desired outcome or using the cherries in a potion or charm. The cherry spell is often used to attract love and romance. It is believed that by consuming or using cherries in a spell, one can attract a soulmate or ignite passion within an existing relationship. The sweet taste and alluring color of the cherries are said to invoke feelings of love and desire. In addition to love, the cherry spell can also be used to bring luck and prosperity. By incorporating cherries into a spell, one can attract financial abundance and success. This is believed to be due to the cherry's association with abundance and fertility. Overall, the cherry spell is a powerful and enchanting practice in the world of magic. Its use of cherries as a catalyst for desired outcomes makes it a unique and captivating spell. Whether seeking love, luck, or prosperity, the cherry spell offers a tantalizing way to manifest one's dreams and desires..
Reviews for "Cherry Spells for Prosperity and Abundance: Attracting Wealth and Success"
1. Jennifer - 2 stars - I had high hopes for "Spellbinding Cherry Spell" based on the rave reviews I had read, but I was sorely disappointed. The plot was all over the place, with no clear direction. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked depth. I found it hard to connect with any of them, which made it difficult to care about their outcomes. Overall, I found the book to be poorly written and underwhelming.
2. Mark - 1 star - "Spellbinding Cherry Spell" was a complete waste of my time. The writing was amateurish and filled with cliches. The dialogue felt forced and unnatural. The story was predictable, and I was constantly rolling my eyes at the contrived twists and turns. Save yourself the trouble and skip this book.
3. Sarah - 2 stars - I struggled to finish "Spellbinding Cherry Spell." The pacing was slow, and the story lacked any real excitement. The romantic aspect felt forced and had no chemistry between the characters. The world-building was weak, and the magic system was poorly explained. I found myself constantly questioning the logic of the plot and couldn't fully immerse myself in the story. Overall, I found it to be a forgettable and uninspiring read.
4. Michael - 2.5 stars - "Spellbinding Cherry Spell" had a promising premise, but it fell flat in execution. The characters were uninteresting, and their motivations weren't well-developed. There were numerous plot holes that left me scratching my head, and the resolution seemed rushed and unsatisfying. The writing style was repetitive and lacked any standout prose. Overall, I was disappointed with this book and wouldn't recommend it to others.
5. Laura - 1.5 stars - I found "Spellbinding Cherry Spell" to be a tedious read. The pacing was slow, and the story lacked excitement or any real sense of urgency. The characters were flat and lacked depth, making it hard to care about their fates. The world-building was lackluster, with little explanation or exploration of the magical elements. The plot meandered aimlessly and had too many unnecessary subplots. Overall, I felt disconnected from the story and was left feeling unsatisfied.