Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte opens with the hero, Tamino, being pursued by a terrible monster. It’s always a challenge to depict such a creature on stage but for the first performances of Nicholas Hytner’s now much revived production at English National Opera, a startling image was conceived. The tenor Tom Randle (then, as now, unaverse to showing off his well-toned torso) would appear, naked, wrapped in the writhing coils of a live snake.
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