Opera in Arabic in the United Arab Emirates, Polish opera director Ryszard Peryt directed Egyptian musicologist Aly Sadek's translation of Mozart's "Don Giovanni," as performed by soloists, the choir of the Université Antonine, Baabda, Lebanon, and the Warsaw Philharmonic's Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Zbigniew Graca. The project planned to present other Mozart opera in the Arabic language, e.g. "The Marriage of Figaro" and "The Magic Flute" and record on the Opera in Arabic label. The first opera in Arabic may be that of the Lebanese composer Wadih Sabra, whose opera "The Two Kings" to a libretto by Father Marun Ghusn, was premiered in
The Smurfs and the Magic Flute the original "Thomas Crown Affair". It was released a year later in its native Belgium, and in some European territories subsequently. A book adaptation of the film, by Anthea Bell, was published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton in 1979 (). It was not until the success of Hanna-Barbera's "The Smurfs" cartoon that "Flute" began to gain widespread attention: in the early 1980s, Stuart R. Ross, head of First Performance Pictures Corporation, acquired the American rights to the film for US$1,000,000. In doing so, he sold those rights to Tribune Entertainment (television), Vestron Video (home video), and Atlantic Releasing