What is it that renders The Magic Flute so enduringly ‘magical’? What prompts opera houses across the globe to return to it season after season? What draws theatre and film directors to probe the complexities of its libretto? What inspires singers to compete for the chance to embody its celebrated characters? And what sustains opera-goers’ appetite for new productions, their anticipation of already well-known arias and ensembles, and their perennial debates over staging, scenery and costume?
These were the questions that immediately came to my mind when the Salzburg State Theatre announced a new production of The Magic Flute for the 2021–2022 season. In pursuit of answers, I initiated a collaboration between the theatre and the Universität Salzburg that culminated in a semester-long course, ‘Staging and Performance: The Magic of The Magic Flute’. Over four months a group of young scholars immersed themselves in the opera’s multifaceted world while contributing to the conceptual development of a new staging. Had the present volume been available at that time, our exploration of the opera’s origins and performance history would have been not only more richly informed but also more efficient.
Although it shares thematic affinities with David Branscombe’s W. A. Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), this volume is not a sequel. Rather, it functions as a kaleidoscope: twenty-one newly commissioned essays form shifting patterns that, grouped into four distinct parts, offer complementary perspectives on the opera and, in their interplay, gradually shape a multifaceted understanding of it.
The first kaleidoscopic pattern (Part I, ‘Conception and Context’) situates The Magic Flute within the tradition of the Viennese singspiel, an operatic form composed specifically in the German language, against its historical and cultural backdrop. In her chapter ‘German Opera in Mozart’s Vienna’ Estelle Joubert highlights musico-dramatic ideas that elicited an exceptionally enthusiastic response from Viennese audiences, while revealing subtle connections between the works of Mozart’s predecessors (such as Ignaz Umlauf and Paul Wranitzky) and The Magic Flute itself. Martin Nedbal identifies the distinctive quality of The Magic Flute’s text, turning to the libretto tradition in his chapter ‘The Libretto and German Enlightenment Theater Reform’. Among other topics, he examines recurring characters and plot devices, and emphasizes the role of moralizing or didactic content in defining a truly German national work. Lisa de Alwis, in ‘Schikaneder and the Theater auf der Wieden’, offers a vivid glimpse behind the scenes of the theatre for which the opera was conceived, introducing the company of singers and actors. Her account makes clear that The Magic Flute is not merely ‘a work of “singularity”’ (57), but also a part of the theatre’s broader repertoire and, in effect, a ‘gallery of portraits’ of those who first embodied its now-iconic characters. Finally, Austin Glatthorn’s ‘The Magic Flute in 1791’ addresses the opera itself. Drawing on the limited surviving documentary evidence – such as extant librettos and contemporary press accounts – he reconstructs the likely visual appearance of the original production, down to individual scenes.
The next turn of the kaleidoscope (Part II, ‘Music, Text, and Action’) narrows the focus, breaking the opera into its constituent elements for closer examination. The ‘dissection’ begins with Julian Rushton’s ‘Music as Stagecraft’. Describing The Magic Flute as ‘a new type of opera for Mozart’ in terms of the relationship between words, music, and drama (85), Rushton demonstrates how Mozart sustains the opera’s vast structure, commenting on the dramatic action through the score (whether by deploying motivic ‘echoes’ or by embracing the stylistic variety that justifies viewing the work as an operone (grand opera)). This theme of diversity becomes the point of departure for Laurel E. Zeiss, who explores musical ‘portraits’ of the principal characters – The Queen of the Night, Tamino, Pamina and Papageno – in her chapter ‘Enduring Portraits: The Arias’. With the support of clearly articulated schematic overviews linking text and music, Zeiss’s analytical study illustrates the power of Mozart’s writing and its ‘ability to endure and speak beyond its original context’ (116). In a related vein, Nicholas Marston turns to the organization and formal design of the opera’s tutti numbers in “‘All Together, Now?” Ensembles and Choruses’, grounding his observations in the libretto’s construction and the surviving stage directions.
The two finales of The Magic Flute receive dedicated treatment in John Platoff’s chapter, ‘Music, Drama, and Spectacle in the Finales’. Drawing illuminating parallels with the finales of the Da Ponte operas, as well as with those of typical Viennese Singspiele, Platoff highlights what makes Mozart’s approach distinctive. His analysis centres on three key dimensions: the deployment of the so-called feierlich (solemn or ceremonial) style, the use of scenery and set changes, and the maintenance of dramatic continuity. Catherine Coppola then turns to a feature of the opera that is often treated as secondary in performance practice: the spoken dialogues. In her chapter, ‘The Dialogues as Indispensable’, she makes a persuasive case for their complete and unaltered inclusion in modern productions. Coppola demonstrates that these spoken passages not only frame and enrich the musical numbers, offering interpretative nuance, but also engage with issues that remain resonant today, including questions of gender, race and class. Additionally, in ‘Musical Topics, Quotations, and References’, Mark Ferraguto delves into the score’s network of concealed references and allusions, treating them as ‘an essential element of its dramatic conception’ that ‘both elaborates and elevates Schikaneder’s libretto’ (145). Emily Dolan and Hayley Fenn, in ‘Instrumentation, Magical and Mundane’, focus on orchestration, considering Mozart’s orchestra both as an entire ‘choir’ and as an ‘ensemble’ of individual ‘characters’.
Part III, ‘Approach and Perspectives’, reassembles the constituent elements, viewing The Magic Flute as an integrated whole. Its five essays present diverse critical perspectives, foregrounding key themes and questions that have shaped recent musicological discourse. Richard Kramer situates the work within the theatrical culture of the Enlightenment, probing Mozart’s and Schikaneder’s relationship to it. Matthew Head’s ‘Exoticism and Enlightened Orientalism’ polishes the magic lamp of methodological enquiry to illuminate the opera’s orientalist and exotic motifs. Thomas Bauman, in ‘Partial Derivatives: Sources, Types, and Tropes’, engages in a kind of virtual colloquy with earlier scholars (including Peter Branscombe, Egon Komorzynski and Stefan Kunze) over contested questions of the work’s sources and meaning. Jessica Waldoff, the volume’s editor, contributes ‘Pamina, the Queen, and the Representation of Women’, foregrounding Pamina as a focal point for scholarship on gender, while Adeline Mueller, in ‘Blackness and Whiteness in The Magic Flute: Reflections from Shakespeare Studies’, juxtaposes Pamina and Monostatos in an insightful analysis framed by race studies.
Turning the kaleidoscope one final time, the volume’s concluding section, ‘Reception, Interpretation, and Influence’, traces the multiple trajectories by which The Magic Flute has become an integral component of the European ‘cultural code’ and a key touchstone in shaping modern perceptions of Mozart as both composer and human being. Ian Woodfield’s ‘A Cultural Phenomenon in an Age of Revolution’ examines a fascinating range of reception contexts, from invitation cards decorated with scenes from the opera to party games and mechanical automata inspired by it. Simon P. Keefe, in ‘The Magic Flute in Biography, Criticism, Literature’, maps the complex narratives that have surrounded the work from Mozart’s death to the present day (including the enduring myth of the composer heroically completing the score in failing health). Daniel R. Melamed’s ‘The Elusive Compositional History of The Magic Flute’ offers a meticulous reassessment of surviving sources, peeling away layers of questionable assumptions and entrenched speculation to illuminate Mozart’s compositional process. Finally, Kate Hopkins’s ‘Staging The Magic Flute’ provides a critical survey of evolving directorial approaches from the opera’s 1791 premiere to the most recent productions (including Kenneth Branagh’s 2006 film), while Dean Duncan’s ‘Ingmar Bergman’s Film Version of The Magic Flute’ closes the volume with a perceptive analysis of this celebrated 1975 screen adaptation.
As with any companion volume addressing a broad spectrum of topics and written by a creative team of scholars, this collection is not immune to constructive criticism. Readers accustomed to the immediacy of contemporary digital media may find themselves wishing for more visual support (graphic materials, illustrations and musical examples) to complement the detailed descriptive and analytical discussions. Those approaching The Magic Flute for the first time might regret the absence of basic tools for orientation, such as a synopsis or plot summary. Seasoned opera-goers, by contrast, may be surprised – or even somewhat frustrated – by the relative neglect of certain well-established intellectual contexts, most notably Freemasonry and its rich symbolic associations. Particularly attentive readers will notice thematic overlaps and occasional repetitions, sometimes extending across several consecutive chapters. Finally, the emphasis on American-centred perspectives in certain gender- and race-related discussions may resonate less with readers from other cultural contexts. Yet such observations ultimately speak more to the varied expectations of its readers than to the shortcomings of the book.
In her introduction, Jessica Waldoff describes the opera as ‘a mirror in which we may see reflected the contradictions and complexity of human nature’ (4). This volume makes clear that The Magic Flute also mirrors the complexity of the questions and concerns of our own time. In our present historical moment, we bring our questions to the work, and the opera, in turn, shows its answers. And is it not precisely this capacity of The Magic Flute – to question, to challenge and to yield fresh answers year after year – that lies at the heart of its enduring magic?
