Pacific Opera Project Revives Tour-De-Force Production Of The Magic Flute AKA #SuperFlute As Classic 90's Video Game

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katlyn Morahan | Morahan Arts and Media
katlyn@morahanartsandmedia.com | 646-378-9386

PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT REVIVES TOUR-DE-FORCE PRODUCTION OF 
THE MAGIC FLUTE AKA #SUPERFLUTE 
AS CLASSIC 90’S VIDEO GAME 

Performances on March 17, 18, 19, 24, 25 & 26
at El Portal Theater 

“Pacific Opera Project’s rollicking new take on The Magic Flute is as much endearing fun as a box full of puppies…I loved it. I think Mozart would have loved it.” - Opera Today

www.pacificoperaproject.com 

Los Angeles, CA (January 31, 2023) — Pacific Opera Project (POP) revives its 2019 tour-de-force production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute AKA #Superflute at El Portal Theater from Friday, March 17, 2023 through Sunday, March 26, 2023. With a new English libretto by POP Artistic Director Josh Shaw and bass-baritone E. Scott Levin, who appears as Papageno in his record 24th POP production, The Magic Flute AKA #Superflute is set as a classic video game from the early 1990s, transporting Papageno, Tamino, and the gang to the land of Mario Brothers and Zelda. 

Cast members include tenor Arnold L. Geis (Silent Night with Washington National Opera & Glimmerglass Opera) as Tamino; soprano Ashley Fabian (Lucia di Lammermoor with Los Angeles Opera, Carmina Burana with Columbus Symphony Orchestra) as Pamina; bass-baritone E. Scott Levin (Gianni Schicchi and El Gato Montes with Los Angeles Opera) as Papageno; soprano Mariah Rae (Carmen with Lyric Opera of Orange County, Iolanta with POP) as Papagena; tenor Robert Norman (Candide with Los Angeles Opera, Madama Butterfly with Opera San Jose, Dayton Opera, and Salt Marsh Opera) as Monastatos; bass Andrew Potter (Don Pasquale with Opera Santa Barbara, Trouble in Tahiti with POP) as Sarastro. Additional cast members include soprano Tiffany Ho as First Lady; soprano Ariel Pisturino as Second Lady; mezzo-soprano Megan Potter as Third Lady; tenor Jonathan Matthews as Priest and Armored Man; bass Michael Payne as Priest and Armored Man; soprano Niko Murakami as First Spirit; soprano Amanda Benjamin as Second Spirit; mezzo-soprano Christine Li as Third Spirit; and soprano Michelle Drever as Queen of the Night. Artistic Director and POP co-founder, Josh Shaw, directs the production.

Additionally Pacific Opera Project’s 2022-23 season includes Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance on May 19 to 28, 2023 outdoors at Forest Lawn Glendale.

Performance Details
THE MAGIC FLUTE AKA #SUPERFLUTE
Pacific Opera Project
Friday, March 17, 2023 at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, March 19, 2023 at 3:00 p.m.
Friday, March 24, 2023 at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 25, 2023 at 3:00 p.m.
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 3:00 p.m.
El Portal Theater | 5269 Lankershim Blvd | North Hollywood, CA 91601
Tickets: $20-$60 (2-show and 3-show packages available)
Ticket Link: https://www.pacificoperaproject.com/superflute 

Cast
Arnold L. Geis - Tamino
Ashley Fabian - Pamina
Scott Levin - Papageno
Mariah Rae - Papagena
Robert Norman - Monastatos
Michelle Drever - Queen of the Night
Andrew Potter - Sarastro
Tiffany Ho - First Lady
Ariel Pisturino - Second Lady
Megan Potter - Third Lady
Jonathan Matthews - Priest; Armored Man
Michael Payne - Priest; Armored Man
Niko Murakami - First Spirit
Amanda Benjamin - Second Spirit
Christine Li - Third Spirit

Staff
Director/Design - Josh Shaw
Conductor - Kyle Naig
Costumes - Maggie Green

About Pacific Opera Project
Founded in 2011, Los Angeles’s Pacific Opera Project (POP) is dedicated to providing quality opera that is accessible, affordable, and entertaining in order to build a broader audience for the art form. LA Magazine writes “If you think you hate opera, you’ve probably never seen a Pacific Opera Project show.” POP’s regularly sold out performances take place in a wide variety of venues, from outdoors, to small clubs, big amphitheaters, and warehouses. LA Weekly named POP the “Best Opera Company in Los Angeles” in 2018, writing “making opera cool, affordable, accessible and enticing to young audiences is easier said than done. It’s also something every opera company in the country is trying desperately to do… [Pacific Opera Project] is not trying desperately to be hip. It just is.” In 2020, POP was awarded The American Prize in Opera Performance.

POP has presented more than 40 innovative new productions to date, including revolutionary drive-in productions of COVID fan tutte and the US staged premieres of two Gluck operas in November 2020, about which Opera Magazine wrote “Despite this plague year of postponements, POP has refused to bow to the pandemic or its restrictions...There is surely no opera company in this Covid-ravaged country with a better average for 2020.” Other critically acclaimed productions include Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio set as an episode of Star Trek; a “fan-tastic” (LA Daily News) Harajuku-themed Mikado; a Dick Tracy Don Giovanni; a Magic Flute inspired by 1990s video games, called “one of the freshest takes on Mozart’s 1791 classic I have come across” (Operawire); and many more. POP’s signature take on Puccini’s La bohème, “AKA The Hipsters,” set in modern day Los Angeles, has become a holiday tradition, returning year after year to sold-out audiences and called “riotous” (LA Weekly) and “an undeniably fun night at the theater that should not be missed” (Stage Raw). POP gave the world premiere of Brooke deRosa’s The Monkey's Paw in 2017.

POP has been dedicated to reaching young audiences with performance and education since its inception, regularly performing for school-aged groups in family-friendly productions, including having a presence in 15 Title 1 schools. POP also partners with Bob Baker Marionette Theater, local YMCAs, and the Burbank Boys and Girls Club. During the COVID-19 pandemic, POP created interactive Education Packs appropriate for kindergarten to eighth grade students to accompany videos of POP’s productions of The Magic Flute and Madama Butterfly. 

In 2019, POP presented its most ambitious project to date: the first ever true-to-story bilingual Madama Butterfly performed in LA’s Little Tokyo. A co-production with Houston’s Opera in the Heights, the production featured a new libretto written by POP’s Founding Artistic Director Josh Shaw and Opera in the Heights Artistic Director Eiki Isomura, presenting Puccini’s story as if it actually happened and attempting to answer the question: “How would Butterfly and Pinkerton communicate?” All Japanese roles were sung in Japanese by Japanese-American artists and all American roles were sung in English. San Francisco Classical Voice described the production as “on a visual scale beyond anything it has taken on before – a sumptuously costumed, fully staged, bilingual co-production… Pacific Opera Project deserves a great deal of credit for making this concept into a reality… innovative, creative, and immensely successful.”

POP presented the 2018 West Coast premiere of Giacomo Rossini’s rarely performed 1816 opera, La gazzetta “The Newspaper.” The first performances in the US were given in Boston at the New England Conservatory in 2013, and POP's production was only the second in North America. Opera Today raved about the premiere, writing “Director Josh Shaw has invested the proceedings with enough good comic ideas for at least three productions. Shaw has set the show in 1960’s Paris, with eye-popping set elements and brilliant uses of color which add to the manic feel… Mr. Shaw has fashioned a take-no-prisoners approach to the staging, which was rife with clever touches… Pacific Opera Project has evidently hit on a winning formula for a night out, serving up food, drink and an operatic discovery in equal measure.”

Learn more at www.pacificoperaproject.com.

Photo at top of release by Martha Benedict

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