It was last year the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Nonetheless, the genius’s influence is certainly not to be bounded by time. Concerts and operas are still playing all over the world’s concert halls and theaters. From the beginning of this year, "The Magic Flute" futher extended this magic to cinema with HD production by Metropolitan Opera. Last weekend, this magic has shown its existence in Singapore, to be precise, GVmax in Vivocity. Must thank GV for bringing in this series. 

I should have called up and met my friends before the show. However I had to attend the annual meeting of AGO singapore chapter. So I wasn’t able to know beforehand whether I was able to show up before the opera started. Actually I’m not yet an active member in the Singapore organ music society. But I did benefit from AGO and met some of my best friends. So I signed up the membership just to contribute a little bit. Ahha, I’m with a grateful heart always.

Back to the cinema, I finally had myself seated before the show started. That’s a pretty nice seat, quite close to the center of the hall, which allowed me to evaluate GV’s best hall’s acoustic and sound system. This HD version is the recorded Dec 2006 with James Levine conducting the orchestra. The stage design and costumes are contemporary. Well, I have no bias, but I really prefer the orginal setting as shown below.

The story wasn’t complex and more important it’s in English not German. I followed up the performance quite well till the last second of the casts and found myself again the only few left in the hall. I turned into the Food Republic next door for a drink and disappeared in illusion with a miss call sent.

The singing and stage performence: 8/10. The coloratura soprano sung pretty impressively. Papageno’s performence too.
The stage and costume design: 7/10. "The Phantom of the Opera" is still the best I seen so far.
Sound reproduction: 6/10. I have no idea whether it’s due to the recording or the GVmax sound system. Guess it’s the later one. It’s incomparable to a live orchestra.
Video reproduction: 7/10. Good.
Overall: 7. At least I dun need to travel to NY.