~Tickets are $3 with a valid Southeast ID

The Southeast Missouri State University Department of Music's upcoming production of "The Magic Flute" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a fantasy opera that features two love stories and an ultimate test of good and evil.

"The Magic Flute" is a story about Tamino, played by Southeast student Andrew Thomas, and Papageno, played by student Ethan Miller, who have been tasked with freeing the queen's daughter from the forces of evil. They are given a magic flute, silver bells and three spirits to guide them on their journey. During their travels, Tamino and Papageno learn that the Queen of the Night, played by visiting artist Alba Cancel, is the true villain.

That's just the first act.

"It's an unusual opera, though, in that it has dialogue in it," professor of music Christopher Goeke said. "Usually operas are completely sung through and there's no dialogue. This show has written dialogue, and the original had written dialogue."

According to Goeke, the Department of Music recently received two grants that are allowing him to do more with this production than he has been able to in the past.

"We're doing more with the costumes. We're doing more with scenery, props. We're actually trying a new thing, for us anyways this year, and that is we're using projected scenery," Goeke said. "So the backgrounds are actually projected images, not painted. It's a projection onto a white drop, and it should be a really, really cool effect."

Professor of art Louise Bodenheimer is creating the images for the projection.

"They're real colorful images, real suggestive of the mood and the location," Goeke said. "They're not literal. It's not like a bunch of trees, or something like that, created to look like a landscape, but rather just a suggestion of the style and mood."

Goeke explained that the production of "The Magic Flute" will be the first time the River Campus has used supertitles.

"When you go to a professional performance for any kind of opera they will project the translation as the show is going," Goeke said. "It depends on how they do it. You've gotta look off to the side sometimes, or above the action or below the action they will actually have the translation being projected on a little screen so that you can follow the action completely because a lot of times opera is in a foreign language. In fact ours is in a foreign language. Ours is in German. So we will have the projected supertitles to help them follow the action."

The speaking parts in "The Magic Flute" are in English, but the singing is in German. Goeke said that while most of the cast has had experience singing in German, they have had some trouble with this particular opera because of the amount of German that is sung.

"They're really rising to the challenge," Goeke said. "They're working really hard. We've been rehearsing most of the fall semester. Of course they have winter break, but we're coming back a little early from winter break. The next two weeks we will have very intensive rehearsal periods."

"The Magic Flute" opens at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 31, and a second performance will be at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 1 in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall. Tickets are $16 or $3 if you show a valid Southeast ID. There is also a closed matinee for local school children. The matinee will be a condensed version of the two-hour performance and will feature highlights of the show.

"We want students to come," Goeke said. "I think it will be a really cool multimedia experience."