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In his youth Peter Brook was famed for his pyrotechnic dazzle. "He cooks," wrote Kenneth Tynan in 1953, "with cream, blood and spices: bread-and-water addicts must look elsewhere." But, at 85, Brook is a very different director. Since 1974, when he took over the artistic directorship of the Bouffes du Nord in Paris, his work has been characterised by its clarity, lightness and distilled elegance

His 90-minute production of Mozart's A Magic Flute, which comes to the Barbican next week, is quintessential late Brook. Out go the opera's pantomimic spectacle, big processions and trios of boys and ladies. Instead, we have a stage bare except for bamboo poles and minimal props and a young, nine-strong cast who deliver the work – sung in German with dialogue in French – crucially situated in front of Franck Krawczyk at the piano. As Brook wryly says: "If you come to this production looking for something that will slam you in the eyes, you've come to the wrong address."

The librettist, Schikaneder, obviously wanted a big, fun popular show with plenty of scenic effects. But he and Mozart were both freemasons and, at a time when the movement was regarded by the Archduke as a potentially subversive political threat, sought to create an opera that is about spiritual trial and initiation. For Mozart, freemasonry represented his intuition that there was something finer and purer in life beyond the material and the everyday."

Décor presque nu, vêtements sobres, chant épuré, la "Flûte enchantée" mise en scène à Paris par Peter Brook, à partir de l'opéra de Mozart, retient l'essence de l'oeuvre pour livrer au public un spectacle à la fois léger et intense

"J'ai abandonné l'opéra (...) sur une haine absolue de cette forme figée - non seulement "la forme opéra" mais aussi "les institutions opéra", le "système opéra" qui bloque tout", raconte celui qui, à 85 ans, a décidé de tourner une page en confiant la direction des Bouffes du Nord à Olivier Mantei et Olivier Poubelle.

La "Flûte" de Peter Brook, qui dure une heure quarante sans entracte, apparaît bel et bien "débarrassée de toutes les conventions imposées par la forme durant des années".

Peter Brook is bowing out with a whimper, not a bang. “A Magic Flute (After Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart),” his new and possibly last production at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris, will appeal only to unconditional fans.

Although Brook, 85, has said that he’ll go on directing right up to his last breath, he’s on his way out. He recently handed over management of his theater to a younger team, Olivier Mantei and Olivier Poubelle, and its public subsidies have been slashed.

Brook also had directed operas, yet felt frustrated with the genre’s conventions and vowed never again to get involved. In 1983, he broke his pledge and staged “La Tragedie de Carmen,” a condensed 83-minute version of Bizet’s masterpiece with a reduced orchestra and some tampering with the score. The result got mixed reviews. While the New York theater critics welcomed the production, music lovers had misgivings. I belong to the second category.

It's the third, and probably the last, in the line of operatic adaptations that Brook and his collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne have produced for his company at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, following their versions of Carmen and Pelléas et Mélisande.

Like its predecessors, A Magic Flute drastically strips down the original: the whole work, played without a break, is over in 90 minutes, the youthful cast is reduced to seven singers and two actors, and the orchestra replaced by a piano part arranged and played by Franck Krawczyk. The set is a collection of vertical canes, constantly moved into new configurations, there are few props, and the costumes are a mix of western and vaguely oriental.

The lack of real context for much of what happens is a distraction, and the rationale for what has been cut and what retained is puzzling.