TV OPERA REVIEW : ‘DIE ZAUBERFLOTE’ STARS COSTUMING DEPARTMENT

New York City Opera must be recovering in spades from the loss of its costume warehouse, which burned down last year. The company’s new production of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflote,” broadcast in the “Live From Lincoln Center” series Wednesday over public television, was a veritable orgy of costuming by Thierry Bosquet and not a great deal else.

The two lovers were in 18th-Century court dress, Monostatos in splashy Turkish finery, Sarastro and the priests in sunny creche robes and the three porcelain-faced, gold-helmeted Ladies in costumes suitable for a Balinese production of the “Mahabharata.”

Director Lofti Mansouri moved these decoratively dressed singers about in traditional, unenlightened stage patterns and introduced a few extraneous, tasteless gags such as Papageno’s whipping the slaves as they danced to his magic bells.

Kirk Browning’s busy, inefficient cameras took a while to settle down amid Bosquet’s fly-away drops, abstract forest and stylized columns . But when they had, they cut away to conductor Sergiu Comissiona at the drop of an aria, disrupting all dramatic continuity.

In introducing the program, general director Beverly Sills touted the production as the company’s first to be sung in German. But you wondered why they bothered. The young American singers’ use of the language was so labored, ranging from the muddy and impenetrable to the merely adequate, that the effect was wearying, particularly over the long stretches of spoken dialogue. Maybe the real idea was to show off the company’s use of supertitles, which Sills also ballyhooed during the chatty and dopey intermission features.

In principal roles, Jon Garrison brought a blocky semblance of ardor and a chalky tenor to the role of Tamino. Faith Esham proved a poised and warm Pamina and sang with silvery, secure tone.

Stephen Dickson made a robust, not wholly convincing Papageno. Rachel Rosales sang the coloratura challenges of the Queen of the Night mostly with accuracy.

Gregory Stapp proved a vocally unsteady, uncharacteristically youthful Sarastro. Jerold Siena was the serious, toothy and near voiceless Monostatos.

Ruth Golden, Jane Bunnell and Rebecca Russell were the plumed, rather shrill Ladies, who interpolated cadenzas at their first trio. No one else did.

Comissiona conducted with brisk efficiency, missing most of the lyric, ethereal and majestic qualities in the score.