Between Peter Gelb’s reign at the Metropolitan Opera and the upcoming arrival of innovator Gerard Mortier at the New York City Opera, the debate about traditional versus experimental stagings has never been more relevant to operagoers in New York. It is, however, somewhat stymied when the work in question is what Mozart composed for Emanuel Schikaneder’s vaudeville house on the Margaretenstrasse in Vienna. One wonders what Wolfgang would have thought of the Alfred Roller sets for “Don Giovanni” at the fin-de-siècle Vienna Opera or the relocation by Peter Sellars of the action to the South Bronx, but with “The Magic Flute,” anything goes.

The opera’s current run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is dominated by the innovative mise-en-scène of South African videographer William Kentridge, who works with charcoal drawings painstakingly shot in freeze frame, altered slightly with erasures, and then rephotographed. The light show, composed of images of clefs and violin F holes, hieroglyphic birds and celestial bodies, is highly intriguing, and the result is spectral black and white featuring line segments reminiscent of the films of Len Lye. His animation is fascinating, what Stan Schwartz called in a recent New York Sun article “an organic protean organism living through time.”

The downside of Mr. Kentridge’s involvement, however, is that he does virtually all the heavy lifting, leaving little for the singing actors to do. This Papageno has no avian attributes, accouterments, or appendages and little incentive to develop as a character. What made the images so pleasing, however, was that they helped to distract from a decidedly second-tier performance.

Much of the trouble came from the pit. Conductor Piers Maxim’s usual role in the opera house is as countertenor who specializes in the Baroque. His “Magic Flute” was neither effervescent nor nuanced. Leading the orchestra of the La Monnaie Opera House of Belgium, he stumbled from the beginning note of the overture, which was enunciated in about as many different ways as there were participants. If this man has heard of a crescendo, he did not demonstrate this knowledge; any sense of comic crispness was supplanted by the amoeba of flaccidity.

Individual singers were rough as well. Jeremy Ovenden was not strong as Tamino. His high notes were routinely transposed down for him, which is preferable to his butchering tones that he could not possibly hit, but it made for some very dull music making. Stephan Loges was more competent as a pleasant-voiced Papageno, but his comic timing was atrocious and his lack of a staccato accent made pudding out of his final scene with Celine Scheen’s Papagena. Kaiser N’Kosi was an acceptable but not commanding Sarastro; Mario Alves was weak as Monostatos.

But not all of the performances proved disappointing. Although a woman must have a death wish to want to tackle the role of Queen of the Night, Milagros Poblador came through splendidly. Freed from the necessity to create any sort of a characterization by the constant bombardment of the visuals, she concentrated instead on hitting all of the notes. In Act 1, her O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn was highly accurate, with only the run-up to one note off pitch. Mozart’s misogyny — or his confidence in his sister-in-law who created the role — makes the second act’s Der Hoelle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen a coloratura masterpiece, but a singer’s nightmare. Ms. Poblador hit all of the high notes, including the infamous four top F’s, squarely. Take it from a longtime “Magic Flute” fanatic — very few women ever do.

Sophie Karthauser, who played her daughter Pamina, was a superb, eloquent lyric soprano throughout, so rich of voice and secure of pitch as to seem almost out of place. Both she and Tamino Ovenden are each granted extraordinary arias with which to shine, but only she made the most of her opportunities. Her Ach, ich fuehl’s, es ist verschwunden was poignant and centered, her suicide aria heart-rending.

Seated directly in front of me was the controversial Mr. Gelb, who has already commissioned Mr. Kentridge to design a new production of “The Nose” by Dmitri Shostakovich. Observing this production, Mr. Gelb was, one hopes, not experiencing a preview of future Met performances, which are already in some danger of neglecting the musical elements of a performance for the theatrical ones.

Until April 14 (30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100).