The Mirage & Beyond
Siegfried & Roy ‘Sing-a-long’ on Las Vegas Boulevard, Bernie Yuman, ca. 1990, Photograph, Courtesy of Robert Stoldal Family Collection. The Neon Museum. 2022.025.049
During their hiatus between the end of Beyond Belief and the start of Siegfried & Roy at the Mirage, Siegfried & Roy stayed busy; the duo, alongside friend and collaborator Lynette Chappell, became American citizens and they even took their show to Tokyo and New York City. Upon their return to Las Vegas, in the lead-up to their projected opening at the Mirage Hotel & Casino, the press speculated endlessly on whether the duo would live up to the impossibly high expectations they faced. Mike Weatherford, writing for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, ominously wrote, “The boys are back in town… but the stakes have never been higher.”
The Mirage Hotel & Casino opened on November 22, 1989, with Siegfried & Roy present at the property’s opening ceremonies. Their show was slated to open the following month, on December 26, but technical issues and production setbacks resulted in a delay which fueled further speculation and even gave rise to rumors that Roy had died under mysterious circumstances. The team’s publicists were pressured to release a public statement denouncing these rumors, and even the Clark County coroner’s office felt compelled to clarify that “no death certificate had [ever] been issued.” The show—boasting a $30 million price tag and a custom-built theatre—finally premiered on February 1, 1990, with tickets going on sale first thing in the morning; crowds amassed with eager fans from all over the world, all trying to get their hands on one of the show’s $60.80 tickets, the price of which was unprecedented at the time. The show premiered to rave reviews, generating nearly $300 million in its first decade at the property.
After more than a decade and across thousands of shows at the Mirage Hotel & Casino, the duo’s act was abruptly cut short in October 2003, after Roy was brutally attacked by a tiger during their show before a packed crowd. Within a week, the nearly 300 cast and crew members who worked on the show regularly were let go. The remainder of Siegfried & Roy’s years together were marked by an arduous recovery, generous philanthropy, and a formalizing of their legacy as Las Vegas iconoclasts; Roy died in May 2020, while Siegfried followed shortly thereafter in January 2021.