This was the most wonderful experience ever. The costumes, scenery, singing, dancing were all superb.

An amazing experience that we will never forget. Collection of the tickets was quick and easy and considering we purchased the cheapest priced seats, the view was excellent from the centre of the dress circle. The opera (Magic Flute) was delivered in English in a modern style, the scenery was first class as were the voices of all participants.

Saw Tarundot, great evening out and one we'll never forget

This was advertised as being at the Opera House but turned out to be on the harbour. ALthough the performance was excellent, we were disappointed in not being able to see the inside of the Opera House and we were totally unprepared for the cold weather of an outdoor performance. I was very disappointed in Viator's misleading online presentation.

As I have never seen a live performance of an opera in my seventy two years and my wife and I were staying a few days in Sydney I decided to take my wife to see The Magic Flute in one of the world's most iconic opera houses. We booked seats through Viator over the Internet and collected our tickets at the Sydney Opera House an hour before the performance was due to start all without a hitch.

The music for The Magic Flute was written by Mozart and first performed in 1791 in Vienna and is to all intents and purposes a pantomime about a prince who fainted when he saw a serpent, three ladies "in the service of the night" who saved the prince from the serpent, a bird catcher who said that it was he who saved the prince and a princess who had been enslaved by an evil sorcerer. I won't go into the plot in detail other than to say as you may have guessed the prince sets out with the bird catcher to rescue the princess who he has fallen hopelessly in love with after seeing a portrait of her supplied by the three ladies of the night.

From what I have read there was a politico/satirical purpose to the the writing of the Magic Flute as both Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder who wrote the words were both members of the same Masonic lodge and Masons had been persecuted by the Empress Maria Theresa before the Magic Flute was written.

The Magic Flute was directed by Julie Taymor, director of Disney’s The Lion King and we had high hopes that the opera would be a memorable performance and indeed it was but none of them were good. That said the singing and acting were good, the lyrics and the music were, however, instantly forgettable.

I know nothing about what goes into producing an opera but I am sure I could have done a better job than this production.

In the synopsis of the Magic Flute in musicwithease.com, the opening sentence says, "The libretto to "The Magic Flute" is considered such a jumble of nonsense that it is as well to endeavour to extract some sense from it" which the synopsis then goes on to do. In the synopsis I learned that the time line for the opera was Egypt, about the reign of Rameses I and the place was near and at the Temple of Isis, Memphis something that I would not have guessed from the rather dull and boring costumes and the the stage settings that varied from the quirky, a large transparent cube with a hole in it to a rather odd and not very convincing temple.

The animations, a flying serpent, various birds and some huge mythical creatures with the body of a bear and the head of a wolf were done I would guess in much the same way that they were done in 1791. The animations were suspended on poles held by a number of people all dressed in black and with blacked out faces. The trouble was that as the stage was taken up by the aforementioned plastic, illuminated cube you could see the animators as they walked about the stage in front of the cube.

To sum up, poor continuity combined with non existent story telling, bad costumes and silly stage sets not to mention dull music and boring lyrics all contributed to a disappointing evening. In fairness however, the vast majority of the audience did seem to enjoy it, there were even cries of, "more" by a masochistic few.