and the priest and group of priests with glowing pyramids and that whole set was fun to create. However the water and fire with the spliting mountian at the end was a real trial! I'm sure the Met. Opera with a million dollar budget could have done it easily, but our local group sure doesn't have that kind of money.
There must be a ton of mythology that all that stuff was built on. The serpant at the beginning, not to mention the bird man and bird woman. Then of course there is the magic flute and the chimes/musicbox of the birdman.
Maybe it all came from his mind, but probably came from some ancient story somewhere.

I remember watching The Met. do the Ring with a SET budget of $8 million dollars. Just for the SET! I watched all of them just to see an $8mill. set! What we build runs $500?