A city subway isn’t usually a place you’d expect to encounter a serpent, a prince in distress, or a clutch of glamorous air hostesses moonlighting as magical beings. But in designer Dan Potra’s vision for The Magic Flute for State Opera South Australia, the story begins in a space familiar to any urban commuter: a bustling metro platform.

Created in a first-time collaboration between State Opera South Australia, Hong Kong Opera and the Beijing Music Festival, and first seen at the Hong Kong Arts Festival in 2025, this staging of Mozart’s much-loved opera transplants the action into something like a modern-day mass transit subway system – a surreal, fast-moving world in which everyday encounters are transformed and people can turn into beings mythic and strange. A bag man becomes the Speaker of the Temple. The Three Ladies appear in the guise of Cathay Pacific flight attendants. The train itself becomes the serpent.

A scene from the Hong Kong production of The Magic Flute. Photo © Opera Hong Kong

For Potra, a bustling train station was a perfect starting point for the project. “We needed something both Hong Kong and Australian audiences...