I visited one of the three major Mozart exhibitions in Vienna, Mozart - Experiment Aufklärung, brought together by Herbert Lachmayer's, a relative of mine, DaPonte Institue. That visit was on 25th June 2006.

So, Mozart was part of the Age of Enlightment, and the Opera "The Magic Flute/ Die Zauberflöte" is a multi-layered piece of information, it was a part of its time, bringing new ways of story-telling, also its "Free-Masons" hints. So, the setting of the Queen of the Night VS Sarastro, the temple chief of geek wisdom, is perfect for Burning Man.

So, to write down this idea:

• Mozart has his 250th Birthday, he is part of Austrian/German culture
• we can bring our culture to Burningman, but we can bring only Costumes and no buildings (via Plane) to burningman
• We can align our costumes with the "Zauberflöte". Ingrid wants to be Papagena. Who is in for the Queen of the Night? Lars fits good for Sarastro :-). Leobard will be Papageno
• We search, on site of Burningman, for possible Stages for the Play. See below for the different stages, thats gonna be the easiest part on a site like Burning Man :-)
• We use the tricks with portable MP3 players and spread out the Music/Words to the masses using MP3Players. Alternatively, if we find enough actors they could sing (with the MP3 Players accompanying). The Play could be improvised like Improveverywhere did with their MP3 Experiment
• We have to cut the play down to 45 minutes, so probably all of Monosthatos and parts of the 2nd Act's tests will have to be cut away. Also, we have to make a script that tells the Actors and Audience to move from stage to stage
• Altogehter, we can play parts of the Opera at all times
• The pimp character of Mozart is a good help here. Reading from the nasty letters as side-order may help

If we get more artist people in, it may be perfect. There are actors like Marisa Lenhardt or Natalie Wilson who are both on BurningMan and have sung the Queen of the Night.

Things we have to take with us:

• a magic flute (hehe)
• The Zauberflöte - das Buch. I already bought two Reclam versions
• costumes
• the cut-down music/play as MP3s, multiple MP3s for each scene one. Some MP3 players
• printouts of the text and directions

Sites we have to find to re-play Zauberflöte:

• In the wilderness,
• a Temple.
• A room in Sarastro's palace.
• Grove and entrance to the temples.
• The courtyard of the temple of Ordeal.
• A garden.
• A hall in the temple of Ordeal.
• The pyramids.
• An open country.
• Rocks with water and a cavern of fire.

I already collected some pictures to go with it, more will come:

www.flickr.com More of lebard's photos tagged with mozart