Siegfried Fischbacher, Of Siegfried & Roy, Dies Aged 81

Contributor
January 16, 2021

After a long battle with pancreatic cancer, magician Siegfried Fischbacher, one half of the iconic Las Vegas duo Siegfried & Roy has this week passed away, aged 81. This comes just eight months after his on, and rumoured off, stage partner Roy Horn passed away from COVID-19 complications.

Confirming the news to German news agency DPA, Fischbacher’s sister said, “He was at home in Las Vegas.” Recalling the conversation they had in his final days she said: “I could pray with him and tell him that I will always be with him in my heart.”

Siegfried & Roy both originally from Germany, met on the TS Bremen luxury cruise liner while working as solo performers. They would begin working together in 1957, making their Las Vegas debut a decade later at the Tropicana Casino Hotel.

“I became a first-class steward. And the captain found out that there is a steward who does some
magic,” Fischbacher told the ABC of their meeting. “So one day, Roy comes here, and he helped me. And afterward, I wanted to find out how he liked it — The Great Siegfried— what a great performance I gave, and he was not very impressed.”

The pair went on to perform some six shows a week, for 44 weeks of the year during their long running and globally successful residency at the Mirage Resort And Casino which commenced in 1990 and ran until 2003, when Horn after having a stroke on stage Horn was critically injured by Montecore one of the pairs’ white tigers. Horn would later go on to tell People Magazine in 2004 that Montecore “saved” his life by trying to drag him to safety after he had a stroke.

Across their careers, both gained an international reputation for helping in the fight to save these rare cats from extinction. Despite sharing so much of their lives together, the pair remained famously tight lipped about their off-stage relationship, leading many to speculate over the true extent of their partnership. Whatever the case, the pair have long been regarded as icons of the LGBTQI community.

Shortly after news of Fischbacher’s death was confirmed, tributes began flooding social media with fellow Las Vegas magician David Copperfield posting to Twitter, “A pioneer who – together with Roy – illuminated Las Vegas with illusion. His legacy will live on not only in magic, but in truly shaping the history and future of this city. RIP Siegfried.”