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| Siegfried & Roy would perform 30,000 shows to 50 million people over their 50-year career. Their story is now a new Australian opera (pictured). (Supplied: Sydney Festival/Neil Bennett) |
By Hannah Story for The Stage Show
The 50-year career of Siegfried & Roy — Las Vegas's highest-paid magic act — came to a gruesome end in 2003.
It was October 3, Roy Horn's 59th birthday, and he was performing alongside his long-time professional (and one-time romantic) partner, Siegfried Fischbacher, in front of about 1,500 people at The Mirage in Las Vegas.
The casino had been the duo's home since 1989, when they signed a multi-year contract worth $US50 million ($80.7 million) to play six shows a week for 44 weeks a year. Their act went beyond magic tricks and illusions though, incorporating rare white lions and tigers the couple would breed at their home.
On that fateful night in October, Siegfried & Roy were joined on stage by a seven-year-old white tiger named Mantacore that Horn had raised since it was three weeks old.
Mid-act, Mantacore mauled Horn, biting into his neck and dragging him off stage. The attack severed the magician's spine, leaving him with permanent damage to his movement and speech.
"Obviously it's tragic in real life," Constantine Costi tells ABC Radio National's The Stage Show.
"But can you think of a more operatic thing to happen?"
Costi is the director and co-librettist of Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera, on now at Sydney Festival.
Written with Kiwi composer and co-librettist Luke Di Somma, the opera turns the larger-than-life magicians into tragic heroes, and their story into a big, queer work of theatre featuring puppet tigers.
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| Opera singers Kanen Breen and Chirstopher Tonkin learnt how to do tricks and illusions from magic consultant Adam Mada (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child). (Supplied: Sydney Festival) |
But don't expect a totally faithful retelling, says award-winning tenor Kanen Breen, who plays Horn opposite baritone Christopher Tonkin as Fischbacher.
"Certain events may have been conflated or inflated for your viewing delectation," he says.
"In our telling, [Horn having] a little too much to drink and maybe one too many nose beers, and Mantacore getting a little long in the tooth, was just a very, very bad combination of events that resulted in certain jugular veins being torn open."
In the opera, as in reality, Horn pleads for mercy for Mantacore on the way to the hospital, claiming he was having a stroke, and that the tiger knew and was trying to help.
Breen sings: "Make sure no harm comes to Mantacore. There is no blame on Mantacore. It's not his fault. He did no wrong."
Costi continues: "And they didn't kill Mantacore in the end, due to Roy's love for the animal."
A meeting of outsiders
Both Horn and Fischbacher were raised in post-war Germany, the sons of violent, alcoholic fathers.
Fischbacher escaped into magic, which he took up at the age of eight after he saw a street performer swallowing razor blades. Horn, meanwhile, grew up caring for exotic animals, thanks to a family friend who founded a zoo in Bremen.
When Horn left home at 13, he took a cheetah with him that he later smuggled onto a cruise ship where he was working as a steward. That's where, in 1959, he met Fischbacher, the ship's magician.
Costi says that when Horn saw Fischbacher's act, he told him: "Listen, this is good, but if you can make a rabbit appear from a hat, could you make a cheetah appear from a box?"
With that, a much-loved double act was born. The pair went on to perform on even more cruise ships, in European nightclubs, and for Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco, Sophia Loren and Frank Sinatra in Monte Carlo, before they were "discovered" in Paris by an American promoter. Siegfried & Roy made their Las Vegas debut in 1967.
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| Siegfried and Roy on stage in Las Vegas in 2001. Around Roy's shoulders is Titan, a five-month-old white Siberian tiger. (Reuters: Ethan Miller) |
Beneath the dramatic story of the pair's rise to fame in Las Vegas and its tragic end, Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera is really about the love story between the magicians.
"They have all the trimmings of what you would expect in operatic characters and aesthetic: outrageous, beautiful costumes; huge, decadent mannerisms," Costi says.
"But when you scratch under the surface, what truly excited me was the tragic love story at the heart of this whole thing: two people who need each other, who fought, who hated each other, but were inseparable.
"It's not really about romantic love. It's about defining love in your own way, and that seeing you through."
Truth and fiction
Costi — an Australian millennial — first learnt about Siegfried & Roy through The Simpsons's parody of the duo: Gunter & Ernst. (Eerily, the 1993 episode features a white tiger mauling the performers.)
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| Costi is excited Siegfried & Roy might broaden people's idea of opera: "Opera can actually be really fun and accessible, and you don't need to have a musicology degree to enjoy it." (Supplied) |
But when Roy was mauled by Mantacore, Costi recognised Siegfried & Roy as a "tragic duo".
By the time he took the idea for an opera about them to outgoing Sydney Festival director Olivia Ansell, their story had played on his mind for years.
After Ansell commissioned the opera — and paired him with Di Somma to bring it to life — Costi dove deep into the lives of Fischbacher and Horn.
"I know more about Siegfried & Roy than anyone in their right mind should," he says.
He read the stories of dinner parties where lions roamed around between the entree and the main course, and watched home videos of their performances.
He even tracked down a copy of the duo's 1992 memoir, Mastering the Impossible.
"The things you suspect are lies are also just as revealing as the facts," Costi says.
"They had such a tight mythology around them, so what's unsaid is almost as revealing as what they did say."
The main piece of dramatic licence he and Di Somma took was in making Mantacore the very same tiger he smuggles onto the cruise ship at the beginning of the opera.
That is, of course, not possible: White tigers live for 12 to 15 years in the wild and about 20 years in captivity, not 50 years; and Horn smuggled a cheetah, not a tiger, on board the ship.
"[We played] with logic and realism," Costi explains. "We thought it would be much more meaningful if we saw the tiger at the beginning as well, and they developed a relationship with Mantacore over the years."
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| Mantacore was named after a creature from ancient Persian mythology whose name means "maneater". (Supplied: Sydney Festival/Neil Bennett) |
To stay true to the spirit of Siegfried & Roy in the opera, Costi and Di Somma tried to balance the absurd with the heartfelt. They also wanted to emphasise the craft that went into their outrageous stage show — one Costi describes as a "big, absurd, gay, Wagner aesthetic".
"Fundamentally, that's not something that you just slide into; that's about practice and diligence and hard work," Costi says.
The director knew he and Di Somma had nailed that balance when he spoke to Teller — one-half of the magic duo Penn & Teller, who were influenced by Siegfried & Roy, and are currently touring Australia — after the show on opening night.
"[Teller said] You didn't make them too ridiculous, but you didn't take them too seriously," Costi recalls.
"I was really relieved that we did them justice as absurd, over-the-top, hysterical, ridiculous people, but also real people who you want to engage with and feel for."
Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera is at Wharf 1 Theatre until January 25 as part of Sydney Festival.
First published at ABC News, January 16, 2025
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