Steampunk 'Magic Flute' returns to Tucson with cinematic twist

When it introduced Daniel Rigazzi’s steampunk vision of Mozart’s The Magic Flute in 2015, Arizona Opera relied on minimalist staging and Leslie Bernstein’s revisionist Victorian-era costumes.

When the company revisited The Magic Flute to close out its 2022-23 season on Saturday, April 15, director Tara Faircloth tapped video projection designer Michael Salvatore Commendatore to create a visual component that took Rigazzi’s steampunk version to a whole new and exciting level.

We no longer had to imagine birds scattering when Papageno (baritone Schyler Vargas) played his penny whistle. A large screen taking up the back end of the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall stage projected the treetops and birds flying right down to their whistles and the sounds of rustling leaves.