Salzburg Festival - The Magic Flute 2022

This is a reworking of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). That opera (in this summary, the reader is assumed to be familiar with the opera) is presented as a tale related by a grandfather to three grandsons. The narration of the tale serves to frame the opera proper.

The grandfather, the boys and their family appear to live in Vienna (or Salzburg?) about a hundred years ago. Almost all the roles in the opera itself are taken by persons who are family members. The director, Lydia Steier, says in a separate video that one of the focuses of the production is how the opera’s action affects the three boys. Another innovation is that Sarastro and his community turn out to be solders who eventually engage in battle, with casualties.

The opera is performed with the usual singing roles, but the purely spoken parts of the original opera are dropped and are replaced by dialog between the grandfather, the boys and a few others such as Papageno.

— Antognini