Opera

The Magic Flute

Rating: 3.5
Author: Michael Halliwell

A laid-back new production of Mozart’s opera

Opera Australia

by Michael Halliwell •

ABR Arts • 02 February 2024

Opera

The Magic Flute

A laid-back new production of Mozart’s opera

Opera Australia

by Michael Halliwell •

ABR Arts • 02 February 2024

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.

Michael Halliwell

Michael Halliwell studied literature and music at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, at the London Opera Centre, and with Tito Gobbi in Florence. He has sung in Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia and was principal baritone for many years with the Netherlands Opera, the Nürnberg Municipal Opera, and the Hamburg State Opera singing over fifty major operatic roles, including several world premiere productions. He has served as Chair of Vocal Studies and Opera, Pro-Dean and Head of School, and Associate Dean (Research) at the Sydney Conservatorium. He is President of the International Association for Word and Music Studies. His publications include the monographs, Opera and the Novel (Rodopi: 2005); and National Identity on Contemporary Australian Opera: myths reconsidered (Routledge, 2018), as well as many chapters and articles. He still performs regularly and recent CDs include When the Empire Calls (ABC Classics, 2005); O for a Muse of Fire: Australian Shakespeare Settings (Vox Australis, 2013); Amy Woodforde-Finden: The Oriental Song-Cycles (Toccata Classics, 2014); That Bloody Game; Australian WWI Songs (Wirripang, 2015).