Cast

Tamino Frank Shott
Pamina Ashley Lynn Gilfix
Papageno Christopher Swaim
Papagena Beth Terwilleger
Queen of the Night Aara Krumpe
Sarastro Paul Michael Bloodgood
Monostatos Orlando Julius Canova
Ladies in Waiting Anne Marie Melendez, Chelsea Mare Renner, Kirby Wallis
Three Boys Ian J. Bethany, Jordan Moser, Preston Andrew Patterson
Priests Edward Carr, Matthew Cotter, James Fuller, Michael Burfield, Calvin L. Thomas, Jr., Adam Bloodgood
Birds Oren Porterfield, Rebecca Johnson, Michelle Thompson, Brittany Strickland, Emily Cloyd, Elise Pekarek
Village Men and Monostatos’ men Ryan Piper, Kody Jauron, Daniel Powers
Village Women Sarah Adeleye, Sarah Hicks, Emily McLaughlin, Whitley Saffron, Daniella Zlatarev
Animals Michael Burfield, Calvin L. Thomas Jr., Eleanor Bacon, Adam Bloodgood, Alyssa Daly, Mandy Wenk

• Credits >>

Credits

Ballet Austin presents The Magic Flute, a World Premiere
Choreography – Stephen Mills
Music – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Shadow Puppetry – Larry Reed and Caryl Kientz, ShadowLight Productions
Orchestral arrangement - Donald Grantham
Lighting Design – TonyTucci
Scenic Design – Michael Raiford
Costume Design – Susan Branch
Costumes construction supervisor - Alexey Korygin
Costume builders - Emily Cavasar, John Ahrens (Customworks), Rebecca Ecklund (Class Act Tutu & Dancewear), Christina Hobbs, Kathy Kreuter, Janna Koryagina, Allison Lowery, Elspeth Mickel, Jamie Urban

• Artist Profiles >>

Artist Profiles

Stephen Mills, Choreographer
Stephen Mills began his tenure as Artistic Director at Ballet Austin in 2000. Known for an innovative and highly collaborative approach to choreography, Mill’s diverse repertoire of original and interpretive works is often difficult to categorize. Notions of classical, neo-classical, and modern meld into the organic as Mills’ manipulation of forms continues to strike at the core of human existence in flux.

Stephen Mills’ growing portfolio of over 40 works continues to enrich the repertories of companies across the U.S. and all over the world. In 2004 The Washington Post dubbed Ballet Austin “one of America’s best kept secrets” after Ballet Austin performed Mills’ world premier of The Taming of the Shrew, commissioned by and performed at The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Recent recipient of the Steinberg Award, the top honor at the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur International Choreographic Competition for his original work One/The Body’s Grace, Mills has guest taught at pre-professional dance academies across the country and remains a committed member of the national dance service organization Dance/USA.


ShadowLight Productions, Shadow Sequences
ShadowLight Productions was founded in 1972 by theatre artist, filmmaker, and shadow master Larry Reed to nurture indigenous shadow theater traditions and to explore and expand the possibilities of the shadow theatre medium by creating innovative interdisciplinary, multicultural works.

Reed is one of the few Americans to be trained in wayang kulit, Balinese shadow puppetry and performed in this tradition around the world over the last 35 years. In the early 1990's, Reed began expanding the scope of ShadowLight’s artistic activities and invented an ingenious shadow casting method that integrates the traditional shadow theatre techniques, cinematic effects, and modern theatre and dance styles. Truly multidisciplinary and performed behind and in front of a large screen, original works employ specially-designed projectors to cast silhouettes of puppets, actors, and cutout sets, all of which are manipulated to create astonishingly cinematic effects live on stage.

Collaborations include American Conservatory Theatre; Santa Fe and LA Operas; Minneapolis Children's Theater; Mabou Mines; the SFArt Institute, Marin Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Karuk tribe of Northern California; Abhinaya Dance Company; Mark Taper Forum; Smuin Ballet; Lee Breuer; Keith Terry; Gamelan Sekar Jaya; Octavio Solis; Puppet & Its Double of Taiwan; Taiyuan Puppet Theatre Company and Cengiz Ozek.

The company has twice been awarded the UNIMA/USA Citation for Excellence from the International Puppetry Association. ShadowLight has also been nominated for a theatrical design award by the American Theater Wing. The company work is featured in puppetry and theater journals worldwide including the 1st and 2nd volumes of Schattentheater, and Eileen Blumenthal's Puppetry: A World History.

(Excerpted from shadowlight.org)


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756. His musician father, Leopold, spent many hours tutoring Wolfgang’s older sister and was, as a result, constantly exposing the boy to music from an extremely young age. By the age of five, Mozart was competent in both the piano and violin, and began to compose himself. Leopold felt he had a duty to nurture his children’s musical skill, and took them on tours to Munich and Vienna. Word of Wolfgang and his sister’s musical genius spread throughout the royal courts of Europe, with Wolfgang and Leopold eventually making their names known in Paris and London.

In 1773, at the age of 17, Wolfgang became a court musician in Salzburg. He held this position for four years before seeking employment elsewhere in Europe. His opera Indomeneo achieved great success in 1781, and Mozart was called to Vienna, where he settled as a freelance composer and married his wife Constanze.

Mozart became revered throughout Europe after the premieres of his famous operas and concertos, including The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. In the last year of his life he was particularly productive creatively, composing some of his most admired works including a series of string quartets, piano and clarinet concerto, his unfinished Requium, and The Magic Flute. He died in December of 1791, unable to witness the excitement his final opera generated over the next year.

(Excerpted from en.wikipedia.org and mozartproject.org)


Donald Grantham, Commissioned Score
Composer Donald Grantham is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in composition, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the Nissim/ASCAP Orchestral Composition Prize, First Prize in the Concordia Chamber Symphony's Awards to American Composers, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, three First Prizes in the NBA/William Revelli Competition, two First Prizes in the ABA/Ostwald Competition, and First Prize in the National Opera Association's Biennial Composition Competition.

His music has been praised for its "elegance, sensitivity, lucidity of thought, clarity of expression and fine lyricism" in a Citation awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In recent years his works have been performed by the orchestras of Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta and the American Composers Orchestra among many others, and he has fulfilled commissions in media from solo instruments to opera.

The composer resides in Austin, Texas and is Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor of Composition at the University of Texas at Austin.

(Excerpted from www.donaldgrantham.com)


Austin Symphony, Musical Accompaniment
The mission of the Austin Symphony Orchestra Society, Inc. is to enhance the cultural quality of life for the adults and young people of Austin and Central Texas by providing excellence in music performance and educational programming.

Founded in 1911, the Austin Symphony Orchestra is Austin’s oldest performing arts group. In January 1998, Peter Bay was named Music Director and Conductor of the Austin Symphony and has also been Music Director of the summer Britt Festival Orchestra in Jacksonville, Oregon since 1993.