The Magic Flute (K. 620), without a doubt Mozart's most profound masterpiece as well as the one subject to the widest range of interpretation, is closely linked to the Budapest Festival Orchestra and its leader. As children, both Iván Fischer and his elder brother, Ádám, participated in the Hungarian State Opera's performances of the work. Later on, in the early 1990s, it was an acclaimed production of The Magic Flute that established the Festival Orchestra's tradition of performing opera. After cycling through the three Da Ponte operas: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, the BFO presented Mozart's final stage masterpiece once again last season, conducted and directed by Iván Fischer.
The Magic Flute was Mozart's most successful opera and surely would have opened a new epoch in his career had death not overtaken him scarcely two months later, on 5 December 1791. The opera was written in a new creative environment and for a new audience: he wrote his 'machine comedy', as the genre was called in those days, on commission from the Wiedner Theater (also known as the Freihaustheater), at that time a suburb of Vienna. Mozart would not get the chance to rejoice in seeing hundreds of performances of his opera at theatres all over the German-speaking world the following season. Its successful world-wide run has lasted ever since.
This performance is an English-language public dress rehearsal prior to touring with the production of The Magic Flute that was first premièred in March 2015.

Presented by: Budapest Festival Orchestra