Simon Phillip Hugh Callow is an English actor. Known as a character actor on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including an Olivier Award and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to acting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue". She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.
Simon Montagu McBurney is an English actor, playwright, and theatre and opera director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films The Manchurian Candidate (2004), Friends with Money, The Last King of Scotland, The Golden Compass (2007), The Duchess (2008), Robin Hood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Magic in the Moonlight, The Theory of Everything, and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015). He played Cecil the choirmaster in BBC's The Vicar of Dibley (1994–2004).
The Magic Flute is Ingmar Bergman's 1975 film version of Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte. It was intended as a television production and was first shown on Swedish television on 1 January 1975, but was followed by a theatrical release later that year. The work is widely viewed as one of the most successful films of an opera ever made, and as an unusual item among the director's works. The film won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Foreign Television Programme in 1976 and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
Mary Zimmerman is an American theatre and opera director and playwright from Nebraska. She is an ensemble member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Manilow Resident Director at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, and also serves as the Jaharis Family Foundation Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University.
U-Carmen eKhayelitsha is a 2008 South African operatic film directed and produced by Mark Dornford-May. The title, "Carmen in Khayelitsha", refers to one of the poorest areas of Cape Town.
The Magic Flute is a 2006 romantic fantasy film directed by Kenneth Branagh, adapted from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's singspiel Die Zauberflöte. An international co-production between France and the United Kingdom, it was produced by Idéale Audience and in association with UK's Peter Moores Foundation.
Jeremy Sams is a British theatre director, composer, and lyricist.
Charles Matthew Egerton Hazlewood is a British conductor. After winning the European Broadcasting Union conducting competition in 1995 whilst still in his twenties, Hazlewood has had a career as an international conductor, music director of film and theatre, composer and a curator of music on British radio and television, Motivational Speaker and founder of Paraorchestra – the world's first integrated ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians. He was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in May 2019 and became Sky Arts' Ambassador for Music in January 2021. In 2023 Hazlewood was recognised for his 'outstanding contribution to the musical life of the UK' when awarded the Sir Charles Groves Prize by music charity Making Music.
John Newport Caird is an English stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was for many years a regular director with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the principal guest director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm (Dramaten).
Diana Damrau is a German soprano who has achieved international fame for her performances, primarily in opera, but also in concert and lieder. She has been successful in coloratura soprano roles since her early career, and gradually proceeded into heavier roles of the 19th-century Italian bel canto repertoire. Her signature roles include the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Violetta in La traviata.
Cape Town Opera (CTO) is a professional opera company in Cape Town, South Africa. CTO was founded in 1999 by the management and staff of the former South Africa Arts Council Opera and the Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB), itself a successor to the Cape Province Performing Arts Council and the previous Opera School at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, which had been founded in the early 1920s under the Italian tenor Giuseppe Paganelli.
Mark Anthony Dornford-May is a British theatre and film director, now based in South Africa.
The Isango Ensemble is a Cape Town-based theatre company led by director Mark Dornford-May and music directors Pauline Malefane and Mandisi Dyantyis. It was established in 2000, when Dornford-May and conductor Charles Hazlewood travelled to South Africa to form a lyric theatre company for the Spier Festival; most of the company members are drawn from the townships around Cape Town. The company's work focuses on re-imagining classics from the Western theatre canon, finding a new context for the stories within a South African or township setting and developing new productions based on South African issues, stories and novels.
The Handspring Puppet Company is a South African puppetry performance and design company. It was established in 1981 by Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones, Jon Weinberg, and Jill Joubert, and is based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Magic Flute Diaries is a 2008 direct-to-DVD Canadian drama film written and directed by Kevin Sullivan, loosely inspired by Mozart's classic opera The Magic Flute. It stars Rutger Hauer, Warren Christie and Mireille Asselin.
The Magic Flute, an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, was composed in 1791 and premiered to great success. It has been an important part of the operatic repertory ever since, and has inspired a great number of sequels, adaptations, novels, films, artwork, and musical compositions.
Jack Wolfe is an English actor. For his theatre work, he has received a number of accolades, including a WhatsOnStage Award and a nomination for a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance as Gabe Goodman in the Donmar Warehouse production of Next to Normal. On screen, he is known for his roles in the film The Magic Flute (2022) and the second season of the Netflix series Shadow and Bone (2023).
Kyle Shepherd is a South African jazz film and theatre composer and pianist. As a film composer he has scored Netflix hit TV series Unseen, Savage Beauty, and Blood and Water. As a performing pianist he has released seven albums and performed in 32 countries around the world in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Théâtre du Châtelet, The Barbican, and the Sydney Opera House.
The Fugard Theatre, also known as The Fugard, was opened in the District Six area of Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2010. It closed in March 2021 and was handed over to the District Six Museum by its founder Eric Abraham. The theatre reopened in 2022 as the District Six Homecoming Centre, while the Fugard's archive moved online.
