Siegfried & Roy at the Mirage

view gallery

This was a magic show conceived by the great German-American illusionists Siegfried Fischbacher & Roy Horn and the designer John Napier. It opened at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas in February 1990 and played continuously there until October 2003 when it closed unexpectedly owing to an injury incurred by Roy Horn during one of the performances.

The show was rehearsed while the building of the Mirage Hotel was still being completed. Because of delays in the construction of the theatre and doubts about the safety of the stage for Siegfried and Roy’s animal co-stars, the original opening date of Christmas 1989 had to be postponed for a month and a half.

The show had some eighty dancers and twelve acrobats – as well as numerous skilled animal handles and technical staff – together with a large menagerie of big cats including white tigers, Bengal tigers, lions, snow leopards, spotted leopards, lep-jags, jaguars and black jaguars, a horse called Favorite and a very beautiful Thai elephant called Gildah.

Photographs by Carol M. Highsmith