Bare Opera Presents The Magic Flute

Bare Opera’s New Production Challenges Tradition

and Turns a Modern Eye on ‘The Magic Flute’

(New York, May 5, 2017) — Bare Opera is bringing a fresh take on Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” to Brooklyn on June 1, 2 and 3, 2017. In the open space of Gowanus Loft, a cast of exceptional emerging artists will lead the audience into a surreal realm evocative of New York City where magic and absurdity meets urban reality to explore the opera through a 21st Century lens. Bringing into question the themes at the very core of the work, the production will ask if the journey to enlightenment means taking on another’s perspective or forging your own path.

“We are all familiar with this opera — the fairy tale has been told numerous times and so many absurd elements in the story are taken for granted,” said Kirsten Scott, Bare Opera’s artistic director.

“We’re not afraid to shake things up a bit and challenge these assumptions,” added Min Lew, the company’s general director. “As the characters of the opera come to their own conclusions on stage, we invite our audience to do the same.”

Infusing elements of contemporary life into “The Magic Flute’s” fantastical world, Bare Opera’s production reinterprets familiar characters and challenges their binary treatment. Pamina becomes the tale’s other protagonist and undergoes a transformation through which she discovers a contemporary feminist identity. Instead of god-like iterations of good and evil, Sarastro and the Queen of the Night are real human characters with complex emotions and motivations. At its core, Bare Opera’s “The Magic Flute” questions the legitimacy of the brotherhood, the cult that is taken for granted as the source of truth and enlightenment in the opera. As Pamina and Tamino go through the cult’s trials they, and the audience, might come to a surprising conclusion about the brotherhood and the real search for truth.

The production features a talented young cast and creative team. Critically-acclaimed Larissa Martinez, a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition PR district 2016, takes a turn as the new Pamina. In December 2017, she will be going on tour with Andrea Bocelli. Award-winning coloratura Yungee Rhie, whose “vocal pyrotechnics” has already thrilled audiences around the world, makes her debut as the Queen of the Night. Conducting is rising star Edward Poll, who recently finished his time as a Rita E. Houser Conducting Fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music where he became Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s protégé. He conducted “Trouble in Tahiti” at the 2015 Glimmerglass Festival. Inspired by his years as a singing actor and experience working behind the scenes in technical theatre, up-and-coming director Justin Griffith Brown brings a clear, stylized vision to the production. He will join the Palm Beach Opera as its resident director for the 2018 winter season.

Continuing its collaborations with diverse artists beyond the world of classical music, Bare Opera has teamed with Isa Rodrigues, a textile artist and a founding member of the Textile Arts Center. Her work “Unseen Colors” was commissioned for “NYC MAKERS: The MAD Biennial” exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design. Rodrigues will be bringing her unique understanding of textiles and color to “The Magic Flute’s” costumes.

For more information about Bare Opera and its new production of “The Magic Flute” as well as interview opportunities with the cast and creative team, please contact Mariana Vanin at hello@bareopera.org or (305) 812-5240.

Bare Opera produces innovative interpretations of operas in intimate venues, where audiences can sit back and experience the raw, visceral power of the human voice and drama. Featuring some of the greatest emerging talent in opera, the company presents standard repertoire as well as hidden gems of the operatic canon such as Ravel's “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges” and Granados' “Goyescas.”

Bare Opera pushes the boundaries and perceptions of opera. In “L’Enfant et les Sortilège,” the company collaborated with artist Alexandra Posen and a team of Minecraft builders to create a Minecraft motion graphics set, reinventing the story in a contemporary child's make-believe, virtual world. In its most recent production, “La Cambiale di Matrimonio,” Bare Opera took what is typically brushed off as a silly operatic plot — an Englishman tries to sell his daughter’s hand in marriage — and connected it to the struggles of women who continue to be forced into marriages today. Through daring reinterpretations of operas and the opera experience itself, Bare Opera strives to be an active agent of change in the cultural landscape of opera and classical music and help create a sustainable future for the art form.

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