Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Emmanuel Shickaneder

Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Berlin, Germany
Premiere February 17, 2019

Director: Yuval Sharon
Conductor: Alondra de la Parra
Set Designer: Mimi Lien
Costume Designer: Walter Van Beirendonck
Lighting Designer: Reinhard Traub
Video Designer: Hannah Wasileski
Sound Designer: Markus Böhm
Dramaturgy: Krystian Lada

This work, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s most famous opera by far, is also his most enigmatic. Prince Tamino falls in love with Pamina after only having seen a picture of her. But as her mother, the Queen of the Night, reports, Pamina is being held captive by Sarastro. At the queen’s behest, Tamino and his companion Papageno set off to free Pamina from Sarastro’s temple. But as soon as they arrive there, the question of which characters are good and which are evil arises. The only thing that seems clear is that Pamina returns Tamino’s affections, and in the end the two of them are united after difficult trials.

For 25 years, August Everding’s production of Die Zauberflöte has enchanted Staatsoper audiences of all ages. But now the time has come for Mozart’s complex masterpiece to be examined anew. And so American director Yuval Sharon carries away audiences to new worlds of images that are no less imaginative, yet aesthetically quite different from the previous production. At the heart of the production is the idea of a collage, analogous to that of Mozart’s music itself, oscillating constantly between the stylistic levels of singspiel and opera seria. Sharon, together with stage designer Mimi Lien and Belgian fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck, takes this variety as an occasion to approach Mozart’s opera in a creatively playful and colorful way.

Photography by Monika Rittershaus.