Die Zauberflöte / Magic flute
Conductor: Robert Houlihan
Stage Director: Bruno Berger-Gorski
Set designer: Daniel Dvořák
Costume designer: Alan Hranitelj
Light design: Marino Frankola
Choreographer: Božena Klimczak
Chorus-mistress: Zsuzsa Budavari Novak,
Assistant to stage director: Nynke Van Den Bergh, Tanja Lužar
Slovensko narodno gledališče
The Magic Flute, a two-act German singspiel (an opera genre with spoken dialogues), undoubtedly represents one of Mozart’s most accomplished works that was conceived in the last year of composer’s life (1791) to a libretto of his friend – a singer, actor and impresario Emanuel Schikaneder. The complexity of this opera reflects the spirit of the Enlightenment, most notably due to its esoteric content and rich symbolism that has been an inherent part of our society since the dawn of humankind. Mozart’s music and theatrical ingenuity, which was for quite some time an unsurpassed phenomenon, addressed the ever "modern" conflict between good and evil, the darkness and the light – or, as in the context of modern psychoanalysis –, the ego and the unconscious, in the character of Prince Tamino, who is torn between temptations of the evil, incarnated by the Queen of the Night, and the sovereign "divine" reign of Sarastro. In contrast, the composer and librettist created the role of Papageno, a simple bird-catcher and Tamino’s "natural" antipode, who is more interested in earthly pleasures than those of knowledge and wisdom.