New Images of Acclaimed The Magic Flute from Beijing Music Festival

New production images show an international cast in a contemporary retelling of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which played the opening weekend of Beijing Music Festival 10 – 11 October with the score played by London Philharmonic Orchestra. The production garnered much praise with the Australian Ambassador to China, Scott Dewar, saying it was “wonderful, the performance was amazing… like music from heaven”.

Shuang Zou, Artistic Director of Beijing Music Festival, directed Magic Flute Sounds • Love Lost and Found in the opening weekend of the festival, which this year presented 13 shows over 12 days. The UK-trained director led an Asia-Pacific co-production, with State Opera South Australia’s Dane Lam conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and a cast from the UK, Germany, USA, Russia and Australia. The production transports Mozart’s late masterpiece The Magic Flute from ancient Egypt to the Hong Kong subway in this bold contemporary production. Following critically acclaimed performances in Hong Kong and Adelaide, the production made its mainland China premiere at the Festival, celebrating the 270th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.

Magic Flute Sounds • Love Lost and Found is a contemporary retelling of The Magic Flute, setting the opera in urban Hong Kong. The Prince and Princess become travellers who have forgotten where they are headed in the city; Papageno a courier; a passing train becomes a dragon. And among the strangers moving through the story and across the platform—Mozart himself appears in their midst, placing the magic flute into the travellers' hands, guiding people as they brush past one another in daily life, only to meet again…

Shuang Zou has been the artistic director for Beijing Music Festival since 2018. Under her leadership, the festival’s New Wave series of immersive opera and music theatre has been built around experimentation, tech-forward international collaboration, previously featuring Muziektheater Transparant’s production of Diary of One who Disappeared by Ivo van Hove and Michel van der Aa 's AR Opera Eight. Shuang’s own work is characterised by reimagined classical works for contemporary audiences, bringing East and West together in surprising ways, and her work and programming creates opportunities for international artists from different cultural backgrounds to meet through new work and co-productions led by Beijing Music Festival.