AS omens go, this was a prom ising one: During the rainiest June in memory, the financially strapped New York City Opera dared to offer an outdoor performance — and an estimated 3,000 New Yorkers dared to turn out for it.
On Thursday evening, nature gave the company a break, bathing “The Magic Flute” in the golden glow of sunset.
The concert in Battery Park City’s Rockefeller Park condensed Mozart’s three-hour saga of initiation into a mystical brotherhood to an hour of highlights.
Lots of music had to be cut, including several numbers for the heroine Pamina, but soprano Lielle Berman brought intensity and an interesting dark vocal color to what remained. Tenor Brian Anderson triumphed over a malfunctioning headset microphone to deliver a sweet and graceful “Portrait Aria.”
As the mysterious high priest Sarastro, bass Eric Jordan made the most of his single solo, adorning the final phrase with a descent to a rumbling low E. In the intact role of the Queen of the Night, soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra delivered her money notes efficiently and looked regal in a midnight-blue ball gown.
The “comic” segments of “Magic Flute” generally turn out anything but, based as they are on gags that modern audiences find sexist and racist. Tenor Jeffrey Halili lavished a handsome light tenor on the role of Monostatos, the African slave who threatens Pamina. He played a character, not a stereotype, and won laughs even from the toddlers in the audience.
The opera’s other comedian, the bird-catcher Papageno, was assigned to the baritone Michael Zegarski. His voice is less than robust, and his puffy shirt, sunglasses and feathered cocktail hat suggested he took too literally his character’s line, “I’m the gayest fellow you ever did see.”
Conductor Jayce Ogren heroically kept the performance moving forward despite a cranky sound system and strings that sagged out of tune in the stifling humidity. City Opera’s staff director Beth Greenberg devised a straightforward, family-friendly staging in the limited space of an outdoor concert platform.
On Nov. 5, the troupe returns to its usual haunt, the Koch Theater in Lincoln Center. There it will try to please a paying public that may be even more fickle than New York’s weather.
THE MAGIC FLUTE
New York City Opera, Battery Park City.