LAS VEGAS (AP) – Illusionist Siegfried Fischbacher, a surviving member of the duo Siegfried and Roy, died in Las Vegas at age 81, reports the dpa news agency.
DOSSIER – Siegfried Fischbacher attends the Academy of Magical Arts’ 50th anniversary gala at the Magic Castle on 2. January 2013 in Hollywood, California. (Getty Images)
A news agency reported Thursday that Mr. Fischbacher’s sister, a nun who lives in Munich, confirmed her death from cancer.
He was at home in Las Vegas, Dolor’s sister told Dad. She said she had spoken to her brother on the phone before he died and they had prayed together.
I was able to pray with him and tell him that I will always be with him in my heart, she said.
After the call, he laid down and fell asleep, she added.
Roy Horn, Fischbacher’s longtime entertainment partner, died last year of complications from COVID-19 at a Las Vegas hospital. He was 75 years old.
The duo thrilled millions with their extraordinary magic tricks until Horn was seriously injured by one of the famous White Tigers in 2003.
In a statement announcing Horne’s death in May, Mr. Fischbacher said from the moment we met, I knew Roy and I would change the world together. There can be no Siegfried without Roy, and no Roy without Siegfried.
He later told Bild am Sonntag that his best friend would always be there for him.
For dinner, as usual, I set the table for him. I’m not the only one, Fischbacher told the paper.
Siegfried & Roy has been a Las Vegas institution for years, where the magic and art of Fischbacher and Horn have repeatedly brought packed auditoriums. The couple performed six times a week, 44 weeks a year.
Horn and Fischbacher, originally from Germany, first worked together in 1957 and debuted in Las Vegas a decade later. Siegfried and Roy started performing at the Mirage in 1990.
These two animals are internationally recognized for helping save white tigers and white lions, two rare species, from extinction. Their $10 million complex has housed dozens of rare animals over the years. The white lions and white tigers are the result of a conservation program that began in the 1980s.
Siegfried and Roy’s show consisted of magic tricks with 20 white tigers and lions, the number of which varied from night to night. Other exotic animals, including an elephant, also participated in the exhibition.
Born on the 13th. In June 1939, in Rosenheim, Bavaria, Fischbacher learned his first magic tricks at a very young age, according to his father.
Horn and Fischbacher met on a cruise ship in 1957. Fischbacher does magic tricks, Horn becomes his assistant, and eventually suggests including a cheetah in the action.
In the mid-1960s, they perfected their animal magic show in small clubs in Germany and Switzerland. Her breakthrough came at the Monte Carlo Casino when a location agent invited her to Las Vegas. In the late 1960s, the couple debuted at the Tropicana hotel-casino.
Illusionists became popular in the 1970s and received their first star in 1978 as a headliner of the Star Industry at the Lido de Paris. Their show Beyond Belief was first presented at the Fringe in 1981 and was performed thousands of times for seven years.
When they signed a lifetime contract with Mirage in 2001, they estimated that since 1990 they had played 5,000 casino shows for 10 million fans and made more than $1 billion.
In the entire history of Las Vegas, no artist has been more important to the development of Las Vegas’ reputation as the entertainment capital of the world than Siegfried and Roy, said Terry Lanny, president of MGM Mirage, the casino’s parent company, after the 2003 attack in which Horn was injured.
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