Mozart/Breiner Magic Flute Diaries

Cast includes Warren Christie, Mireille Asselin, Olivier Laquerre, Erin Wmdle and Rutger Hauer Score adapted and conducted by Peter Breiner

Film written and directed by Kevin Sullivan Sullivan Entertainment ® 22 24222 (104' • NTSC • 16:9 • DTS 5.1 • 0)

It sounds pretentious, even gooey but, once past "Tamino" in voice-over name-checking all the tourist highlights of Salzburg ("a romantic kind of place.. .the von Trapp family.....), director Kevin Sullivan's taste and fluency get some enjoyable action going on all three levels of his story. The English translation of the opera used - especially the dialogue - is convincing and often illuminating; the musical score has been skilfully cut and elided; even the John Williams-style music (by the film's musical director/arranger Peter Breiner) provided to underscore much of the dialogue in the "operafor-real" comes off. And it soon becomes apparent in the context of the essentially Romantic, naturalistic opera-for-real that the Casper-like flying spook shapes from which the Queen and her Ladies emerge (they're created by the wonderfully named Ghost FX studio) are more magical and effective than their overchoreographed equivalents in the recent Kenneth Branagh movie.

There is nothing remarkably new or experimental here - just professionally made entertainment which (for once) really might attract and interest viewers who are not yet opera fans. A CD of the film's soundtrack (Sullivan Entertainment 3562) has also been issued. Mike Ashman