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 Magic Flute (1975 film) with the ominous face of Monostatos glimpsed over her shoulder. The scene in which Three Boys prevent Pamina's near-suicide takes place in the snow, and clearly not on the theater stage. The film was a great success. In its televised premiere (New Year's Day 1975), it reached a third of the population of Sweden, and in theatrical release it created "pandemonium at box offices around the world" (Pauline Kael) and delighted many critics. In her review in "The New Yorker", Kael wrote: Ingmar Bergman's film version of "The Magic Flute" is a blissful present, a model of how opera can