Isango, internationally known for transporting European classics into a South African setting, fuses the opera’s original story with a Tsonga folktale also involving a magic flute. The two dozen performers—mostly local to Cape Town—dance, play rollicking melodies, and trill Mozart’s arias in this acclaimed rendering of Impempe Yomlingo (“magic flute” in the South African language of Xhosa).

Founded in 2000 by Director Mark Dornford-May and singer and actress Pauline Malefane, Isango fluently moves between African and European music, theater and storytelling. As the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The Isango Ensemble, one of the world's most unusual, interesting and important theater and opera companies, doesn't distinguish between African theater and European opera. Nor does the company… acknowledge barriers between African myth and European, African ritual and European, African music and European.” Inspired by Masonic rites, the story of The Magic Flute has stunning similarities with traditions of the Tsonga of South Africa. Papageno (Mozart's bird catcher), the Queen of the Night, Sarastro's spiritualist tribe, the magic flute, the trial of fire and water are just a few of the Flute elements found in timeless African folk tales.