Magic Flute

Film-Opera DVD - Music and cinema come together in the most brilliant -- and accessible -- cinematic adaptation of an opera ever made. Performed by singers who can act as well as vocalize, Ingmar Bergman's richly textured version of Mozart's The Magic Flute is a beautifully staged mixture of fairy tale and Masonic allegory that captures all of the opera's drama, humor, romance, and underlying philosophy. In the original libretto a sorcerer kidnaps Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, and handsome Prince Tamino sets out to rescue her with the promised reward of her hand in marriage. Bergman makes cuts to the text and score and adds his own inventive plot points, such as turning the queen and the sorcerer into a divorced couple. Sven Nykvist, Bergman's longtime cinematographer, works visual marvels, using subtle light and shade to infuse each scene with an otherworldly atmosphere. The film was shot in Stockholm's Drottningholm Theatre in the presence of an enraptured audience, and the close-ups of deligh