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.