Adelaide Festival Release Fifth Performance Of THE MAGIC FLUTE Following Record Sales

Barrie Kosky and 1927's multi-award winning opera The Magic Flute will have an extra show added to its 2019 Adelaide Festival season after breaking all box office records for an Adelaide Festival opera over the last two weeks.

The centrepiece of the 2019 Adelaide Festival, The Magic Flute has already proved popular with interstate audiences who have snapped up 30% of overall ticket sales. Together with local audiences they will join half a million people in 22 cities across Europe, America and Asia who have already seen Berlin-based Komische Oper perform Mozart's masterpiece.

Compared to the first two weeks of sales achieved by previous Adelaide Festival opera events, ticket sales for The Magic Flute have exceeded Saul (2017) by 38% and Hamlet (2018) by 63%. With over 3000 tickets already sold across 4 performances, The Magic Flute, which fuses the virtuosity of live opera performance with grand-scale animated tableaux, is selling faster than Saul, which sold out its four performances 13 weeks after it went on sale.

Joint Artistic Directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield AO said: "Wow! We knew Australian audiences would be excited about The Magic Flute's inclusion in the 2019 Adelaide Festival and the chance to see this landmark work, but we did not expect to be announcing a fifth show so soon. Kosky's Saul sold out very fast and many people were devastated about missing out - it's clear that audiences aren't going to risk that a second time 'round!"

"The audience response is also a testament to co-directors Barrie Kosky, Suzanne Andrade and the miraculous team of artists at Komische Oper Berlin that there is so much early excitement. Together they have created a rare magnum opus that appeals to a broad range of people, from seasoned opera lovers to opera first timers. It is also confirmation that Adelaide Festival remains the destination event for arts lovers across the country."

The fifth performance of The Magic Flute will be performed on Sunday March 3 at 7pm. Tickets will go on sale Friday 24 August at 12pm.

Barrie Kosky is one of the world's finest living opera and theatre directors. The Laurence Olivier Award winner was born in Melbourne and lives in Berlin. In 1996, Kosky became the youngest ever Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival aged 29, and delivered one of the most memorable festivals in its 50-plus-year history. He was Artistic Director of the Schauspielhaus Vienna from 2001-2005, and was appointed the Artistic Director and Intendant of the Komische Oper Berlin in 2012. At the end of his first season, the Komische Oper was voted 'Opera House of the Year' by 50 international opera critics and more recently won the International Opera Award for Opera Company of 2015. Kosky's celebrated opera and theatre work includes productions for Opera Australia, the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Netherlands Opera, Oper Frankfurt, Los Angeles Opera, English National Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Belvoir, Malthouse Theatre, Sydney and Melbourne International Festivals, and many more.

1927 is a multi-award winning London-based independent performance company that specialises in integrating live performance and music with hand-made animation and film to create magical cinematic productions. The result is a unique theatrical experience that inspires, informs, and entertains. Working across theatre, opera, music and dance, 1927 crosses borders and boundaries creatively and literally - collaborating with partners and making work for audiences in the UK and across the globe.