Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

The Magic Flute

A laid-back new production of Mozart’s opera
Opera Australia
by
ABR Arts 02 February 2024

The Magic Flute

A laid-back new production of Mozart’s opera
Opera Australia
by
ABR Arts 02 February 2024
Ben Mingay as Papageno and Michael Smallwood as Tamino (photograph by Keith Saunders)
Ben Mingay as Papageno and Michael Smallwood as Tamino (photograph by Keith Saunders)

The heyday of the opera film – a film made of an opera to be shown in cinemas, and not necessarily filmed in a theatre – occurred in the final three decades of the twentieth century. Films emerged with regularity, often from well-known opera directors such as Franco Zeffirelli, Jean-Pierre Ponelle, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, and others. However, the advent of live opera HD broadcasts early in the twenty-first century, pioneered and still dominated by the New York Metropolitan Opera, in many ways put paid to this genre, and as the technology of live and recorded performances improved exponentially, a film of an opera became increasingly rare.

From the New Issue

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.