The Magic Flute at Piazza Vittorio

Il Flauto Magico di Piazza Vittorio (The Magic Flute at Piazza Vittorio) is a musical film where the musicians of the multi-ethnic and multi-faceted “Piazza Vittorio Orchestra” revisit and re-enact, not only as musicians but also as actors, Mozart’s opera, by enriching and adapting it to a modern setting, everyone according to his/her own traditions and musical cultures. The result is an alternative version of the events: another possible way for the story to go and for the relationships between the characters to be.

We will discover that perhaps the real hero isn’t Tamino, and that the female characters, contrary to what happens in Mozart’s opera, can change the course of events and assume a decisive role. For example, Pamina has never decided anything in her life; it has always been others making decisions for her. She was kidnapped by Sarastro, a man who behaves in a fatherly fashion but is, nonetheless, her kidnapper. Her mother wants her to become a murderer. She’s not even totally convinced she’s in love with Prince Tamino. She’s a confused girl who doesn’t know what she wants out of life but in the end, takes the situation into her own hands and makes her choice, changing the course of the story and giving us an unexpected ending.

Everything in our movie takes place inside the gardens during the night. The gardens are magically animated and the fathers, workmen, babysitters and children in the first scene, who were simply visitors, are transformed into princes, sorcerers, queens and priests.