No matter how many productions you might have seen of Mozart’s Magic Flute, almost certainly none was like what West Edge Opera is serving up March 4–11. It’s the famously “different” David Scott Marley’s new English adaptation in Japanese manga (comics/cartoons) style.
In Marley’s resume: Bat Out of Hell (adaptation of Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus), The Riot Grrrl on Mars (née Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri), Daughter of the Cabinet (née Lecocq’s La Fille du Madame Angot), and so on.
So why “Manga Flute”? The answer is reminiscent of Sammy Cahn’s to the question of which comes first, words or music — “the phone call.” In Marley’s case, it was West Edge Artistic Director Mark Streshinsky who commissioned the English version. The suggestion was not love at first sight:
Artistic Director Mark Streshinsky introduces our next opera:
A new interpretation of Mozart's The Magic Flute by David Scott Marley
A young prince, lost in a world where magical monsters menace and the powers of night and day wrestle for domination, strikes out to save a princess... Is this a story torn from the pages of a comic book? Well, we imagined that it could be! The fantastical world of manga comic art will come to life in this brand new production in a new interpretation by the incredible David Scott Marley.
