Tricks, Trysts and Tigers: How the Lives of Infamous Illusionists Siegfried and Roy Became an (Unauthorised) Opera

Before Harry Potter and Elphaba, there was Siegfried and Roy. While today we may be more accustomed to seeing spells cast on the silver screen, in the 80s and 90s, this pair of magical showmen ruled the zeitgeist, dazzling audiences on the Las Vegas strip and delivering thousands of shows seen by an estimated 50 million people — including the likes of Micheal Jackson, Pope John Paul II and then-President Bill Clinton. Central to their act — and their mega-watt celebrity status — was the use of exotic animals in their glitzy, super-sized illusions. They made an elephant disappear, levitated jungle cats over the heads of audiences and casually cosied up to an entire pride of adult white tigers — something that would eventually prove to be the pair's grisly undoing.

Far from learning their magical craft at a whimsical wizarding school, Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn prototyped their illusionist double act on cruise ships after a chance encounter in the early 1960s on board the TS Bremen, where they were both members of the crew. The pair shared much in common. Both had survived violent upbringings, brutalised by alcoholic fathers warped by their years fighting as Nazi soldiers. Both had found escapism in small wonders — Roy in a love of animals and Siegfried in a fascination with magic tricks. And both had yearned for a life far from the rubble and ruin of post-war Germany.

This rags-to-riches story — and the rumour and intrigue that orbit it — has provided the source material for a new chamber opera premiering at the 2025 Sydney Festival. The potential of a Siegfried and Roy biopic on stage had been simmering in the mind of director Constantine Costi for some time. For him, opera seemed the obvious vehicle for a narrative with such dramatic extremes already woven into its fabric.

"Siegfried and Roy were so opulent and over the top that I'm quite certain that if they had a say in how their life story would be told on stage, they would probably opt for something with the grand decadence of opera," Costi insists. "I mean, two big strapping German men wearing capes and sequinned scarves and fabulous costumes surrounded by wild animals — that sounds pretty operatic to me."

After Costi pitched the idea, Sydney Festival Director Olivia Ansell agreed that a chamber opera based on the magical duo's life deserved to be heard. She connected Costi with composer Luke Di Somma, whose experience writing operas made him the ideal collaborator.

"For me, it's really about the scale and size and grander of their lives that makes this story so ideal for an opera," Di Somma explains. "The word I keep coming back to is 'heightened'. Everything about these guys was so heightened and OTT — their ambition, their audacity, their journey from war-torn Germany to Las Vegas. These were operatic-sized dreams."

"Two big strapping German men wearing capes and sequinned scarves and fabulous costumes surrounded by wild animals — that sounds pretty operatic to me."

While in the spotlight, Siegfried and Roy appeared to be consummate creatures of show biz, but they were also fiercely protective of their personal lives, keeping many facets of themselves, including their romantic relationship with one another, a secret. With so much of the truth of these two men masked by their carefully crafted public personas, Costi and Di Somma needed to take some artistic liberties with their show's plot — hence the qualifying subtitle "The Unauthorised Opera".

"There have been documentaries made about them and a lot written about them, but they were always in control of the narrative. So this is one of the first pieces about them that has brought an objective, outside eye to their life," Di Somma shares.

​​"This is not Wikipedia on stage — this is a work with a strong point of view about who they really were. One of the things that [Constantine] and I really enjoyed exploring is how they were so different as people. They were always marketed and known as a duo, but their individual personalities were surprisingly different. Roy was the extrovert while Siegfried was far more reserved in his private life. There's a great quote from someone who said that without Zigfried, Roy would have been too much, but without Roy, Siegfried wouldn't have been enough."

Revealing the untold intimacies of Siegfried and Roy are two of Australia's most talented opera singers, tenor Kanen Breen and baritone Christopher Tonkin, who have also been vital sounding boards in the composition of the work, testing out material and offering fresh perspectives on the plot. "[Siegfried and Roy's] sexual politics were kept pretty private, but I certainly personally regarded it as an important aspect that the production needed to investigate," Breen says. "Having the writers in the room is great because you can bring up things like this as we workshop the piece. So, you can fight for the validity of the storytelling and indeed, it has become an important part of the story you'll see on stage."

"This show is absolutely a love story, but there are actually three people involved. And the third is a tiger," Tonkin adds, in reference to the infamous incident on October 3, 2003, that would come to define Siegfried and Roy's place in the public consciousness. During a performance at The Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, a seven-year-old white tiger named Mantacore attacked Roy in front of thousands of horrified onlookers. After knocking Roy to the ground, Mantacore sunk his teeth into the magician's neck and dragged him off stage, severing his spinal cord in the process. Roy miraculously survived the attack, although he was left with permanent damage to his mobility and cognitive function, essentially ending the duo's career in an instant.

Despite his brush with death, Roy was fiercely defensive of Mantacore, even suggesting that via some sixth sense, the tiger had detected a stroke that was later diagnosed in hospital as possibly preceding the attack, and was in fact attempting to save (rather than snack on) his beloved owner.

"His love of these animals, even after such a bloody experience, creates a very beautiful character out of the tiger." Tonkin says. "This is one of the most interesting things about this show, because we know from the outset that the story is headed for tragedy. It's how we join the dots that connect that outcome to the rest of the story that makes it so satisfying."

The world-premiere performance of 'Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera' takes place at Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf 1 Theatre from January 8–25. For tickets, visit the Sydney Festival website.