The Magic Flute – directed and adapted for Opera Anywhere by Sue Moore

A young man with a passion for books reads about a magical kingdom where ‘day’ and ‘night’ wage war against each other. As he reads he is consumed by the story, so much so that he realises that he has fallen into his own fantasy world. He meets the Queen of the Night and her mortal enemy, the leader of the Sun Temple, the mighty Sarastro. The Queen and her Three Ladies charge him with a quest, to rescue the Queen’s daughter, the beautiful Pamina, who has been kidnapped by Monostatos, a henchman working for Sarastro. Accompanied by the bird catcher, Papageno, the young man, Tamino, starts a voyage of discovery as he searches for love, truth and consequently a purpose higher than himself, with only his Magic Flute and Three Boys to guide him.

Marrying Mozart’s beautiful music with a witty script, this production celebrates the birth of ‘teen culture’ in a timeless coming-of-age story and explores the ‘other-worldliness’ which glamorous Hollywood brought to post ‘Blitz’ London. After such austerity, Britain’s youth looked to the USA for new cultural influences in music, fashion and attitude. Young women were beginning to challenge the confines of their role in society and young men wanted to reinvent themselves as the new matinee stars like James Dean or Marlon Brando. Tamino finds himself sucked into the Britain of his imagination where gamekeepers wear tweeds and young women are prim and proper. In his youthful innocence he still believes that good is good and bad is bad but, as we all discover when we grow up, in reality human morality is defined in shades of grey and nothing is as first it seems… Will Tamino escape the serpent? Will he save Pamina? Will he discover the truth about the Queen and Sarastro? All will be revealed! Take a magical journey with Opera Anywhere‘s brand new production of The Magic Flute