Skip to main content



MOZART’S THE MAGIC FLUTE  - 
TEN YEARS SINCE THE FIRST
MET Live in HD BROADCAST

Five things you need to know about the Met’s Live in HD of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. on December 3, 2016.

1.  The Magic Flute was the first broadcast that launched the Met’s award winning series Live in HD  to movie theaters in 2006.   A hundred operas since then, Live in HD has proven to be a resounding success.  And it all started with that magic moment when The Magic Flute kicked it off ten years ago.

2.  This production is filled with opera legendaries.  Director Julie Taymour,  Maestro James Levine, and an ensemble cast –  Nathan Gunn, Ying Huang, Matthew Polenzani, Erika Miklosa, and René Pape—all  together create a magical stage event.

3.  Tenor Matthew Polenzani might be the prince hero of the opera but guess who takes the honors as being one of the sexiest men alive;  Papageno, his sidekick unwilling bird catcher.   

People magazine labeled baritone Nathan Gunn that in 2008.  Gunn is a real  barihunk or hunkitone —so his lines about wishing for a girlfriend  as Papageno seem even sillier now.

4.   Soprano Ying Huang is a beautiful Pamino but YouTube, which also started around 10 or so years ago,  assures  that Erika Miklosa continues to really be Queen of the Night.

5.  In the same year  as this Met version, Rene Pape was Sarastro  in Kenneth Kenneth Branagh’s movie which sets the opera in WWI.  Wow! He owns that role (as he does so many others).

Now that the facts have checked, enjoy the magic when a 200 year old opera is experienced thorough 20th century technology in a  place — where the silly meets the sublime—the ever now The Magic Flute by Mozart. 










Popular posts from this blog

  Once is here again!   The Brooklyn Gallery Players reach into the treasure chest of great musicals to bring Once alive and on stage in Brooklyn (until to December 17, 2023). Director Mark Gallagher , and Music Directors David Fletcher and Brendon McCray have crafted a vibrant production, seamlessly integrating the 15 member cast in roles  as both actors and musicians. Set in Dublin, the  formula for the poignant love triangle  is simple. Patrick Newhart  plays Guy, an Irish musician who has given up  on love as he sings the award winning classic  Falling.  Newhart mastered the bombastic busking guitar style and performed each of his songs with intensity and passion Sophie Smith-Brody  is Girl,  a Czech woman  who will inspire him to try again both in  love and with music. Smith-Brody performed each of her disparate songs with aplomb,  from the opening classical piece to her plaintive solos – If You Want...
Read more
  Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando — sparkling wit and ageless wisdom —   at   Constellation Theatre — gone but not forgotten In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando A Biography ,  the eponymous hero undergoes many changes over the centuries— from roles in society and relationships to sex change.  Since the time travel gender bending work was published in 1928, this his/her story has continued to undergone adaptions to its original form, from analytical scholarly critiques to crowd pleasing  movies and stage plays.  Constellation Theatre Company continued  the tradition with its amazing presentation of Sarah Ruhl’s narrative play Orlando .    Five actors  take on dozens of roles as characters or in the  chorus to keep the story at its rapid pace,  condensing events spanning almost five centuries into 100 minutes.   Orlando (Mary Myers) is  ever the aristocrat whether as a page in the court of  Queen Elizabeth I (Alan Naylor)...
Read more
  Welcome back to Sharpenicity         This week specials are something to sing about!   A Medieval Christmas concert         A  jazz opera MET in HD opera
Read more