During this performance, we will take you on a journey to the land of the art called opera. Helping us with this will be the genius of opera, the great Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the 250th anniversary of his birth was celebrated recently all over the world.

Using Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute, we will tell you what opera theatre is all about. Watching the performance, you will see that it combines all other existing fields of art. There is orchestra music, singing, theatre, dance, stage movement. There is also everything that makes up an image, such as architectural forms, colour, light, costumes, hairdos and make-up. More and more often, opera productions also feature audiovisual arts: film, computer projections, videos. There is also room in opera for different kinds of special effects: falling rain, snow, colourful smoke, or gold “stardust”.

You will be able to see many of these artistic means of expression, which serve to build an opera production, as you watch the characters from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. We will show you extensive excerpts from this famous work in our performance titled In the Land of the Magic Flute.

Your guide in this adventure with Mozart, and with opera as an artistic genre, will be Papageno the bird catcher. The composer made him one of the heroes of his opera. Papageno will tell you a tale of love and friendship – the most important values in every person’s life. You will feel the power of the Queen of the Night’s anger, and the courage of her ladies-in-waiting. Sarastro the high priest will show you the image of a world governed by wisdom, kindness, and peace.

You will see how the power of the friendship between Papageno and Prince Tamino helps them through many an ordeal. You will meet Princess Pamina, who luckily will not obey her dangerous mother, the Queen of the Night, and will not kill anybody. You will discover there is no such thing as a dead-end situation, though sometimes it may seem that way, and that you must never give up.

There will be some “good spirits” as well, whom Mozart mysteriously described as “Drei Knaben”, never explaining who these “Three Boys” actually were. We have dubbed them the “Heavenly Emergency Service”, as they always appear when someone needs help. They put things right again, and restore hope. So, never fear – in the land of the magic flute, thanks to a little magic, everything has to end well, as it does in any genuine and beautiful fairy tale. We hope to infect you at least a little with our love of opera, our love of the world of opera theatre and the music of Mozart. We hope you enjoy yourselves at the Polish National Opera.