Tiger Kings Siegfried & Roy Get Their Own Opera

Posted on: January 20, 2025, 12:25h. 

Last updated on: January 20, 2025, 12:26h.

“Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorized Opera” is the most Las Vegas show ever to be staged off the Strip. In fact, it boggles the mind that Sydney, Australia came up with the idea first.

They’re not Siegfried & Roy but an incredible illusion. (Image: Sydney Festival)

Australian composer Luke Di Somma and director Constantine Costi long ago recognized how perfectly suited the unparalleled highs and lows experienced by the world’s most successful magicians were for the operatic form. So they set about

Tenor Kanen Breen and baritone Christoper Tonkin inhabit the Bavarian duo in the production, which premiered on Jan. 14 and runs until Jan. 25 at the Sydney Theatre Company as part of the Sydney Festival.

Siegfreudian Rhapsody

The 90-minute tragicomedy opens with Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn being introduced at the end of their careers, with Siegfried supporting a still badly injured Roy as he struggles to take a bow at his 60th birthday party. (The tiger actually mauled him on his 59th.)

Christopher Tonkin plays Siegfried to Kanen Breen’s Roy. Photograph: Jacquie Manning/Sydney Festival)

In flashback, the audience gets to visit key events in their career: from their meet-cute, to their premiere at the Mirage, to Horn’s acquisition of Mantacore, the beloved white tiger who ended their livelihood in the most savage and public way imaginable. (Thankfully, he is played in the opera by a  puppet.)

There was drama in their private lives as well, and “Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorized Opera” provides a front-row glimpse into their struggles with their fathers, their carefully guarded romance and their disagreements along the way.

Cat’s Out of the Bag

There are so far no plans to take the show to Las Vegas. However, the way the reviews have read so far, Vegas might have to wait for a Broadway run first.

Broadway World called the show a “brilliant expression of arguably Las Vegas’ most famous characters,” noting that “with the requisite drama, intrigue, passion and tragedy for an opera, the lives of Siegfried and Roy is a perfect fit for the genre.”

The Australian Arts Review added that this is not only “a serious opera rather than the clever satirical romp it could have so easily have been,” it is “a remarkable opera which deserves to be seen by a wider audience than those fortunate enough to experience it during this comparatively short premiere season.”

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