[ad_1]
In his last appearance in February 2009, he was given the monk. With slow, dragging steps, each with enormous effort, Roy made his way to the stage, on which he had previously apparently effortlessly balanced himself with a white tiger on a disco ball. He was now hidden under a hood and covered by a mask, and slowly carried a torch to the table. It seemed painfully mundane, unmagical.
You didn’t have to be a true fan of magic shows or the lazy world of Las Vegas to be touched by this farewell performance at the Bellagio Hotel. No exaggerated grand staging, like an operetta, no gestures of grandeur with plum-blouse sleeves – this look was almost minimalist, a word you never would have thought of in conjunction with Siegfried and Roy, these otherwise reject Reliable fashion glitter panties.
After Roy conjured his partner out of a bowl of fire, they magically conjured the last element on stage that, despite all simplicity, would unequivocally confirm his character Siegfried and Roy – a white tiger. And not just anyone: The animal that made Roy appear in the display case was Montecore, the same tiger that had almost killed him on stage five and a half years ago when he suddenly grabbed him by the neck. And the reason this parting was so visibly laborious and vulnerable: Roy had been paralyzed on his side for a long time after the tiger accident, he slowly learned to speak and walk again in the years that followed.
Siegfried and Roy are two of these characters, where you always have to think about whether they are fictional characters or real people. There aren’t many more of these notoriously nameless glamor creatures that are so iconic that their image, their idea, can be reproduced with minimal effort. If you want to dress up for Carnival like Siegfried and Roy, a blonde, dark-haired wig and plush cat stapled to the lapel are enough to be identifiable from generation to generation in an emergency. Only two of you have to be mandatory, the two of you fused symbiotically. “Fan and Band, Girl and Boy, Siegfried and Roy – Troy”, the Fantastic Four dismiss their inseparability.
The duo in their late 1980s version is more vivid to look at, in the years of their triumph in Las Vegas: Siegfried with the blonde helmet-shaped hero curls, Roy like a dark, undulating musketeer. A duo that only becomes human again through death, to disillusioned worldly people. “There can be no Siegfried without Roy, and no Roy without Siegfried,” said the companion left after Roy’s death.
When they met, he would have immediately felt that they would change the world together, Siegfried, the bourgeois Siegfried Fischbacher, continued. The two met on the passenger ship “Bremen” in 1960: Roy, at that time still Uwe Ludwig Horn, had hired there as a cabin crew and assisted Fischbacher, who performed a small magic show on board. “What you did today with the rabbit, could you do it with a cheetah?” Roy asked him soon, Siegfried said in an interview. “Sure,” he replied, but he still didn’t suspect that Roy would actually smuggle a large cat on board to incorporate him into the magic show.
The cheetah was named Chico, Roy had met him at the Bremen Zoo, which his uncle had helped find and where he spent a long time after school cleaning cages and talking to animals. In 1944 she was born in Nordenham, Lower Saxony, her father had died in war and Uwe’s love for animals was her cat’s door to another comforting world during those years. That connected him to Siegfried, who as a boy put on the magician’s cloak as if he could protect him from the dispute and violence in his damaged family.
“They are mircacle workers” – they are miraculous workers
Advertisement at the Paris Lido
In 1964, the two landed and toured Europe, evoking their first international breakthrough two years later in Monte Carlo in a charity show in front of Princess Grace Patricia. “They are more than magicians,” they were announced a little later when they appeared on the Lido in Paris, “they are mirror workers,” miraculous workers who turned feather boas into royal flamingos.
Since Paris went to Las Vegas in 1967, one could easily believe that Siegfried and Roy had just invented the city, that they fit in very well there. In fact, they shaped the image of this huge adult playground like no artist to them: Because they let exotic animals appear in their show instead of bare-chested dancers, their shows reshaped the former scapegoat at least in parts in a familiar version without frivolities.
In 1987, they signed a five-year, $ 57.5 million deal with Steve Wynn, whose “Mirage” casino hotel had yet to be built, the largest deal in show business history. This was the beginning of Siegfried and Roy’s record collection: they had the highest production costs, the most appearances and the longest commitment. And Michael Jackson wrote the opening song for his show with “Mind is the Magic,” in which he sang about flying panthers and ghost cats: “Who creates wonders like no one? / Siegfried & Roy / You know it’s Siegfried & Roy” .
In the “Mirage”, the two built a dream world in the dream world, their glazed “Secret Garden” and the associated “Jungle Palace”, in which they temporarily lived with 63 tigers, 16 lions, giant snakes and other exotic animals, and the most daring. Little Uwe’s dreams were overcome. Television recordings show Roy rolling in a dazzling avalanche of white tiger, bellowing with the big cats, swimming and frowning. As another, beloved rendition of the ubiquitous Joe Exotic “Exotic King”: Just as eccentric, possibly just as obsessed, but just the easiest-to-digest glamorous variant, far less upsetting and glamorous. Sometimes Siegfried and Roy owned ten percent of the world’s living white tigers, most of whom were their own offspring.
Roy couldn’t describe how wonderful it feels when an adult tiger licks his face, Roy once said in an interview, but he never forgets about this contraband that a single hit of the paw can kill him: “It’s that easy.”
On his 59th birthday on October 3, 2003, what Roy had previously thought only about the subjunctive happened during a performance: the white tiger Montecore grabbed him by the neck, dragged him offstage, and nearly fatally wounded him. What happened there is still unclear to this day: Roy defended the tiger to the end and explained that he had suffered a mild stroke immediately prior to the accident, after which Montecore wanted to get him off the stage to safety. The tiger lived with Siegfried and Roy until his death in 2014, who later mourned his “friend and brother” on Facebook. Siegfried had long been his friend, not his love partner. It was only in 2007 that the magical couple stated in an interview that they had been loving until 1998.
Their common magic word was still “Sarmoti,” short for “Siegfried and Roy, Masters of the Impossible,” even if their later years together after Roy’s accident were a sad rebuttal to this fantastically exaggerated claim: Siegfried might appear tigers and making the elephants disappear, but by not making his friend feel completely well again, his wounds left him with irreparable damage. Roy Horn died on May 8 of complications from a coronavirus infection. He was 75 years old.
