The Magic Flute

GNO Lead donor

Mozart’s much loved opera returns to the GNO in an impressive, innovative production which launched in Berlin and has already become famous worldwide. Wherever The Magic Flute directed by Barrie Kosky, the Australian artistic director of the Komische Oper Berlin has been staged, crowds have been awed by the production’s sheer imagination and by the precision with which the artists perform the ‘dance-like’ directions, which merge animation with ‘live’ spectacle and a sense of cabaret, music hall and Weimar Republic era shows as well as dabs of British humor and opera.
Working with the British “1927” theatre company, Kosky employed animation to create an unexpected fairytale packed with color, joy and inventive turns, and “this production points the way toward a freer, more experimental style of producing opera” to quote the New York Times review. The Magic Flute’s creative universe contains distinctive references ranging from Buster Keaton and Nosferatu to Louise Brooks and Terry Gilliam.
Since it was first staged in Berlin in 2012, the “amazing irrational mix of silent cinema and animation” (Berliner Morgenpost) to the present day The Magic Flute has travelled from Los Angeles to China, and from the Edinburgh Festival to Spain and Switzerland, and shortly before the GNO performances will also be presented at the Bolshoi in Moscow and at the Paris Comic Opera.
Christina Poulitsi, a Greek soprano who has made a career for herself internationally in the role, will play the Queen of the Night, a role that is one of the most demanding in the soprano repertoire. She has starred in tens of performances of this production worldwide, and is now a close associate of Barrie Kosky and the Komische Oper Berlin.

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