Opera Workshop to Present New View of ‘The Magic Flute’

The Ithaca College Opera Workshop will add a new twist to a classic work when it performs Mozart’s The Magic Flute on Sunday, December 2. This free performance, under the direction of assistant professor of opera and musical theater Patrick Hansen, will start at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall. Pianist Brian DeMaris ’02 will be the accompanist, and the work will be sung in English.

Though the students in the workshop will perform the opera without sets, staging and costumes will be used. The music will remain entirely Mozart, but the traditional allegory presented in the story will be recast.

"Usually the opera is staged as the good Masonic Enlightenment against the evil of superstition," says Hansen. "In this version the evil of consumerism will be set against the good of creativity, while love of others will be exalted above the love of things."

The look of the opera will be different from tradition as well, Hansen says, with laptops, cell phones, and Rollerblades all appearing onstage.