Mozart's "Magic Flute"

Scissorshapes after Lotte Reiniger "Die großen Opern"(The great operas)

Those of you who have been in the sawmill already, know that you will always find something new with every visit. Furthermore we regularly have new projects. In 2005 it was not difficult to find a theme for a project. In 2004 it was the 200th birthday of danish storyteller H.C. Andersen, in 2005 it should be W.A. Mozart who would have celebrated his 250th birthday. It was not difficult for us to find patterns and ideas for an H.C. Andersen exhibition, because the patterns you could see cut in plywood were Mr. Andersens own designs and scissorshapes.

But Mozart made it not that easy for us. Besides his great unforgetable music, the Austrian never made any scissorshapes or patterns of his work.
After searching for patterns or ideas for a Mozart exhibition we found Lotte Reiniger, a filmmaker and filmsetdesigner from Germany, who created scissorshapes of Mozart great operas, like "The magic flute", "Figaros wedding", "Don Giovanni" and "Cosi van tutte"in the early seventies. The idea was born but how should we get those patterns, if you consider that the only book with pictures of those scissorshapes was already sold out and hardly to find in antique bookstores. We contacted the publisher and told about our plan. They sent us a copy of the book, but meant that it would most likely not be possible to cut the shapes into plywood because of the filligrane patterns.

We didn't give up and since 2006, you can see Lotte Reinigers scissorshapes of Mozart's "Magic Flute" cut in plywood here in our little sawmill in Svankjær. Every Act is a little masterpiece, every scene more filligrane than the other. This exhibition is absolutely unique, because the little sawmill in the small village Svankjær in the region called Thy up in the very north of Denmark is the only place on earth where you can see it.

Only one scene of the work can be found in Denmarks library for music in Frederiksborg, after an emplyee of the library could convince us that this one scene would be the perfect gift for the library's 40th anniversary.

One highlight of the exhibition is the following scene. The original scene by Lotte Reiniger was put together from two single scissorshapes, in the sawmill it was cut out in one piece.