Opera Atelier is renowned for polished contemporary spectacles that seem to take us back to the time of an opera’s creation, Evidently, this year’s revival of The Magic Flute is at least the third swing the company has taken at everybody’s favorite operatic fantasy. (The designs, we’re told, are the ones overhauled, “with magic and wonder,” by Gerard Gauci in 2013.) Expect “dragons, flying machines, and dazzling 18th-century special effects,” which are in fact just what the doctor ordered. The performances are sung in the English translation of the late Andrew Porter, longtime music critic for The New Yorker, who had a rare flair for that tricky art. The tenor Colin Ainsworth, an Atelier favorite, sings Tamino, the prince who sets off to rescue the Queen of the Night’s kidnapped daughter, only to develop a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome when he finds her. But that’s OK. Princess Pamina, it turns out, has Stockholm Syndrome, too. The story is rough on mothers—though contemporary audiences don’t exactly embrace the father figure of Sarastro, whose stately music struck George Bernard Shaw as “suitable for the voice of God.” —Matthew Gurewitsch