Conductor Dane Lam. Director Zou Shuang (right) and set/costume designer, Dan Potra.

Conductor Dane Lam. Director Zou Shuang (right) and set/costume designer, Dan Potra.

Soprano Sofia Troncoso from the US sings as Pamina in Beijing with tenor Anthony Gregory on Thursday.

American baritone opera singer John Chest (left), who plays the character Papageno in the new production of The Magic Flute for the Beijing Music Festival, in a rehearsal in Beijing on Thursday.

British tenor Anthony Gregory in a rehearsal in the role of Tamino.

For an opera written more than two centuries ago, the story begins in an unexpected place: a metro platform.

But for director Zou Shuang, the image unlocked a new path into Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Every day, strangers meet, pass one another, and disappear into the crowd. Sometimes, Zou says, you may never see someone again. And sometimes, you unexpectedly encounter a person you thought you had lost forever.

"What if the magic of the opera did not take place in some distant world, but suddenly emerged from a place we pass through every day?" she asks.

That question lies at the heart of a new international production of Mozart's final opera, which will be presented at the 29th Beijing Music Festival on Saturday and Sunday at the China National Opera House.

Rather than beginning with Tamino setting out to find Pamina, Zou's version starts with two people who once loved each other, were separated, and met again on a metro platform. They enter the fantastical world of The Magic Flute as Tamino and Pamina, embarking on a journey that turns the opera's familiar theme of "searching" into one of loss and reunion.

The transformation is visible throughout the production. A train becomes a dragon. Advertisements on the platform come alive. A delivery rider turns into a strange birdman. A street musician becomes Mozart himself and places the magic flute in Tamino's hands. At the end, the journey returns to the same platform where it began, almost as if the entire adventure had been a dream.

For Zou, however, the dream also asks a very contemporary question: What are people searching for today?

"We are all searching for something," she says. "When we are young, it may be love or the future; later it may be direction, certainty, or even ourselves."

The other side of searching, she adds, is loss. Often, it is through loss that people begin to understand what matters most to them.

That makes the opera's famous trials of fire and water more than fantastical theatrical episodes in this production. They become metaphors for the difficulties people encounter in their own lives — and for the question of whether, after those experiences, they still dare to believe in love and to see another person and themselves anew.

For US baritone John Chest, who plays Papageno, one of the opera's most beloved figures, the production's contemporary setting also reminds us of something much simpler: the enduring appeal of being ordinary. Papageno is the comic counterpart to Prince Tamino and a bird-catcher who helps Tamino on his journey.

Chest first performed Papageno in 2013, shortly after joining the Deutsche Oper Berlin ensemble. More than a decade later, he sees Papageno differently.

On the surface, the bird-catcher appears simple, even foolish. But Chest believes the key to understanding him is another quality: sincerity.

"His world is small, and he only knows what he knows," Chest says. "But, as the story progresses and his world expands, he proves that being himself is enough for every situation."

That quality makes Papageno a natural bridge between Mozart's fantastical world and contemporary audiences. He is not a philosopher or a hero in the traditional sense. He wants food, companionship and love. His desires are uncomplicated, but deeply human.

For Chest, that may be precisely why the character has remained so accessible across centuries and cultures.

"I think Papageno's lesson for us all is that we can and should be content with the simple pleasures of life," he says.

The production's international character extends well beyond language. It brings together singers and creative artists from different countries, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chinese choirs.

For conductor Dane Lam, the mixture of musical traditions is one of the production's greatest attractions.

"Every musician arrives with their own training and sound," says Lam, who has worked extensively with Chinese orchestras and has served as principal conductor of the Xi'an Symphony Orchestra in Shaanxi province since 2014.

He sees the different backgrounds not as something to be ironed out, but as a source of color. A London orchestra brings its own Mozart tradition, Chinese choruses contribute a sound and discipline he has admired for years, and international soloists bring the experience of performing in opera houses around the world.

The task during rehearsals, he says, is to find a shared musical language: how the artists phrase a passage, breathe together, and shape a pause.

"Once that's in place, the different backgrounds become an asset," Lam says.

Listening, he believes, is fundamental.

"Opera is a living conversation between the stage and the pit, and it changes every night." A singer may breathe a moment later, or a chorus may find new energy in a scene, requiring the orchestra to hear and respond.

"The best performances happen when every musician is paying attention to everyone else."

That principle seems particularly appropriate for a production whose very subject is encounters.

Zou likewise sees the rehearsal room as one of the most tangible places for cultural exchange. For international singers who may have performed Tamino or Pamina many times, this production asks them to reconsider familiar characters: What changes when these are not two people meeting for the first time, but two people who once loved each other and lost one another?

"Cultural exchange does not necessarily happen through grand statements," Zou says. "It happens in the rehearsal room."

Chest has found a similar lesson in working around the world. The diversity among the artists involved, he says, has only strengthened his belief in the universality of Mozart's work.

For him, that universality is not abstract.

"I believe music is a universal language that we all understand," Chest says. "And no one was more a master of it than Mozart."

Lam, who has worked in China for more than a decade, also sees international collaboration as something that happens through sustained contact rather than grand declarations.

"When musicians from different countries spend weeks solving problems together, friendships form that last well beyond a single production," he says.

That experience has also shaped how Chest thinks about cultural differences.

Working across countries and cultures, he says, has taught him something similar to what Papageno discovers during his journey: "No matter how different we may seem at first, we all have a shared humanity that is greater than any visible or cultural difference."

That idea is also at the heart of Zou's approach to bringing a European classic into a contemporary Asian setting.

"We are not trying to change Mozart," she says, "nor are we trying to provide an 'Eastern answer' to The Magic Flute."

Instead, the production places a familiar story in an unfamiliar position — one where a Western classic is viewed through the experience of contemporary Asian urban life.

"Something very interesting then happens," Zou says. "Mozart's music has not changed, but the position from which we look at it has."

The production's journey reflects that same exchange. First developed in Hong Kong, it traveled to Australia before arriving in Beijing, continuing to evolve as it encounters new artists and audiences.

For Zou, that represents a broader shift in how international cultural collaboration can work: not simply bringing international works into China or sending Chinese artists abroad, but allowing new ideas developed in China to enter the international creative conversation.

The production is both a reinterpretation of a classic and an experiment in cultural encounters.

For younger audiences, however, all of that may be less important than the simple experience of being drawn into the theater.

Zou hopes they will leave with one thought: "Opera can have something to do with me."

They do not need to know Mozart in advance or understand 18th-century European history. They can be moved by an aria, laugh at Papageno, be surprised when a train turns into a dragon, or look at the metro platform and recognize their own lives.

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn