See Mozart’s opera ‘The Magic Flute’ on Saturday

Above : The Met Opera Encore production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” will screen at select theaters on Saturday. (Photo/Fathom Events)

The Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadues Mozart died young. This much we know.

What we don’t know, exactly, is what killed him. He was racing to finish his Requiem in D minor when he became ill, and the work remained unfinished when he died on Dec. 5, 1791.

Much of this, of course, is featured in Milos Forman Oscar-winning 1984 film “Amadeus,” which dramatist Peter Shaffer adapted from his own – some would say imaginative – stage play.

We know this, too: Barely two months before he died, Mozart had conducted the premiere of his opera “The Magic Flute.” And it had been a popular success, as it continues to be to this day.

Beginning in 2004, the noted director Julie Taymor oversaw production of the opera for The Metropolitan Opera. And the abridged, 100-minute, English-language version of “The Magic Flute” that she later directed earned positive reviews.

The production, wrote critic Steve Cohen , is “partly a celebration of Masonry, partly a romantic fantasy and partly a slapstick street comedy. Some productions are tedious as they shift back-and-forth among these genres. Taymor’s take focuses on the fanciful, and it’s great fun.”

You’ll have a chance to see what Cohen was writing about at 12:55 p.m. on Saturday when a pair of local movie theaters screen The Met Opera Encore production of “The Magic Flute” in a first-ever “Live in HD” transmission.

The screening will take place in Regal Cinemas at Northtown Mall and Coeur d’Alene’s Riverstone Stadium.

Here’s yet another thing we know: Mozart’s music is as well-received now as it’s ever been. You can take Julie Taymor’s word for it.