Output details

The Magic Flute

This was a project made by performance company '1927' (Paul Barritt and Suzanne Andrade) in collaboration with the Komische Oper in Berlin and specifically its artistic director Barrie Kosky. We were approached by Kosky in 2009 and worked with him until November 2012. We began with a fairly casual selection of “ideas” sessions which increased in intensity until the final year of focused animation and cue listing/choreography planning, followed by an eight week rehearsal with the singers.

The Magic Flute is certainly one of the most well known operas, particularly in the German speaking world, and for us it was important, first and foremost, to make it entertaining and funny and also visually exciting. We never wanted there to be any lulls in the action and for it to flow from aria to aria. The winning conceit we came up with for this was cutting some dialogue to be replaced with neat Silent Movie style text plates. These were then underscored by a pianist. Thus without breaks in the music, we could add in plenty of extra 'gags' and could remove any 18th Century humour that is less likely to be understood by contemporary audiences. This meant a focus instead on the intricate interaction between performer and animation in which 1927 specialise.

The adaptation sold out its Berlin run at the Komische Oper and has half sold out the next season already. It was performed at the Los Angeles Opera in November 2013, the Dusseldorf Opera in December 2013r, at will be performed at the Minnesota Opera in February 2014, the Edinburgh International Festival August 2014, and the Melbourne Festival in 2016.

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