Opera through the years:
The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute was Mozart's final opera, and is the composer at his crowd-pleasing, inventive best. The libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder features princes and princesses, evil queens and killer serpents, demons and spirits. It transports audiences to a far-off land.

We've been performing the opera for more than six decades, and it's offered plenty of artists the opportunity to let their imaginations run wild. Our productions have all been beautiful, surprising and out of this world.

Director Kate Gaul and her fabulous creative team will be the next to put their own unique spin on The Magic Flute in a new production at Sydney Opera House this summer.

In the lead up, we're celebrating our rich history with The Magic Flute, from our first ever season, to a Royal visit, to Mozart on the beach!

1956

In 1956, our company was born with a tour of four Mozart operas. Then known as the Elizabethan Trust Opera Company, we started with a season in Adelaide, before touring to Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.

Among the four operas was a whimsical version of The Magic Flute, by Viennese-born director Stefan Haag, who was associated with Opera Australia until 1969. The production was set in a fantastical land that drew a lot of inspiration from Ancient Egypt, and included plenty of special effects. The Queen of the Night, played by Betty Prentice, made her entrance upon a flying cloud from the side of the stage (although there were performances when the cloud refused to cooperate and make its full journey, leaving the singer hanging in the air). The production was revived in 1959 and then 1968, and was notorious for its technical challenges.

It also featured projections (a novelty in opera at the time), including 35 slides for 13 scenes, designed and painted by Desmonde Downing. Special projectors were to be delivered from Vienna for the production, but they were held up in customs and reached Adelaide only five days before the premiere.

The cast also included Max Worthley as Tamino, Geoffrey Chard (who last appeared with the company in 1996 after a long stretch of leading roles) as Papageno, Marjorie Conley (Chard’s wife) as Pamina, and Stanley Clarkson as Sarastro. They were conducted by Joseph Post.

1986

Swedish opera director Göran Järvefelt was already considered a Mozart specialist when he came to Australia to direct a new production of The Magic Flute, filling in for Elijah Moshinsky, who dropped out to take on other projects.

Järvefelt wanted to create a version that found the humanity of the story, focusing on the journeys of the two young couples: Pamina and Tamino, and Papagena and Papageno. Swedish singer Håkan Hagegård sang Papageno, a role he had previously performed in Ingmar Bergmann’s 1975 film of the opera, with Gran Wilson as Tamino, and Amanda Thane as Pamina.

Richard Bonynge conducted the production, and while its creation wasn’t always the smoothest process — Moffatt Oxenbould, former Opera Australia Artistic Director, recalls that Bonynge and Järvefelt were in constant conflict over the staging — it was celebrated by critics as a sensitive and surprisingly moving version of the opera. It remained in our repertoire for almost two decades, until 2005.

2006

For our 50th anniversary season, we reimagined The Magic Flute (again), in a nod to our first ever season. Australian-born opera director David Freeman was enlisted to bring a fresh perspective to the piece, joining forces with Australia’s leading physical theatre ensemble, Legs on the Wall, to create a magical, high-flying version of this mythical story. Debra Batton, who was then Artistic Director of Legs on the Wall, created fabulous movement for each of the characters as the production's choreographer.

Dan Potra’s designs were original and imaginative, with the Queen of the Night making her entrance on a floating crescent moon (which thankfully proved less technically fraught than the floating cloud in our 1956 production). Amelia Farrugia scaled the heights of Mozart’s score as the Queen of the Night, with Emma Matthews as Pamina, Jaewoo Kim as Tamino, and Warwick Fyfe as Papageno. The cast was conducted by Opera Australia Music Director, Richard Hickox.

2012

With her globe-conquering 1997 stage version of The Lion King, Julie Taymor became one of the world’s most influential theatre directors. She brought her extraordinary imagination to Mozart in this production, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2005 and made its Australian debut at the Sydney Opera House in 2012 with conductor Jonathan Darlington.

Taymor, whose use of puppetry became famous through The Lion King, employed dazzling, oversized puppets and props to create a visually spectacular, family-friendly affair. The production was performed in English and features some judicious edits to ensure the action rolls forward and the focus is on the opera’s protagonists.

At the centre of the opera was a giant rotating Perspex palace, with a nine-metre serpent puppet and towering polar bears trawling about the stage.

The premiere season featured Nicole Car and Mariana Hong as Pamina, Andrew Brunsdon and John Longmuir as Tamino, Andrew Jones and Luke Gabbedy as Papageno, Emma Pearson, Suzanne Shakespeare and Angela Brun as Queen of the Night, and David Parkin as Sarastro.

The Magic Flute

Sydney Opera House
1 February–16 March 2024