Magic doesn’t just happen. Opera singers Kanen Breen and Christopher Tonkin are learning that the hard way. Making magic is key to their onstage partnership as the stars of a new Australian opera about one of the most successful stage partnerships of all time – that of Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn: two boys raised in postwar Germany with violent, alcoholic fathers, who became life and stage partners, created a celebrated magic and animal act in Europe in the 1960s, and then went on to become the highest-paid act in Las Vegas – until, in 2003, the duo’s beloved white tiger, Mantacore, put an end to their career in spectacularly bloody fashion.
Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera, co-written by director Constantine Costi and composer Luke Di Somma, is one of the centrepieces of this year’s Sydney festival.
