I’m particularly looking forward to the broadcast of The Magic Flute this week: Mozart’s masterpiece was the first opera I saw, though it wasn’t live but a TV broadcast of the delightful filmed adaptation Ingmar Bergman made in 1975. It is widely acknowledged as one of the most successful filmed operas (and, for that matter, plays) ever, and may well be the perfect gateway film to the perfect gateway opera.
What’s gateway art? Basically, it’s an easy first step into opera, ballet, art film or avant-garde theater, the kind of thing you should start with if you’re either young or older but willing to explore unknown territory. (And don’t think that gateway works are simplistic or artistically inferior. Not only did seeing Bergman’s movie in my early teens start me on a lifetime of loving the arts, but it’s an enduringly charming, poetic, incredibly multilayered masterpiece.) read more
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