Mozart again. 221 years later...

Solomia Krushelnytska Lviv National Opera and Ballet Theater had a premiere – opera The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is an opera in two acts first staged in Vienna in 1791. Libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The plot was taken from a fairy tale by Christoph Martin Wieland Lulu which was a part of the fantastic collection of poems Dschinnistan or Selected Tales of Fairies and Spirits. Interestingly, the premiere of The Magic Flute was held in Lviv year after the first performance in Vienna in 1792 and became an outstanding event in the cultural life of the city.

Now, 221 years after the first production of The Magic Flute in Lviv it was staged again, this time by Zbigniew Chrzanowski – director, Honored Worker of Culture of Poland, together with Tadei Ryndzak – art director, People’s Artist of Ukraine, and Myron Yusypovych – conductor Honored Artist of Ukraine.

Nadia Trush, Chief Information Officer of the Lviv National Opera and Ballet Theater, told The Day that almost the entire troupe is involved in this opera, since each role has a number of performers.

“Generally, Mozart’s compositions are difficult to stage and here it is also somewhat complicated by the peculiarities of German-Austrian opera, which consists of alternating singing and speaking,” said Trush. “Besides, our singers perform the vocal arias in German and the conversational parts – in Ukrainian, which, you see, is another difficult aspect.”

The singers took German lessons especially for this show. But according to Trush this was not a big problem for them because artists of Lviv Theater perform singing parts in several languages – Ukrainian, Italian, Polish, Russian, and French. “Now we’ve added also German to this list.”