Die Zauberflöte
(The Magic Flute)
Singpiel in two acts
Libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder
Premiere: September 30, 1791
Cast in order of appearance:
Tamino, a prince (tenor)
Three ladies, attendants to the Queen (sopranos)
Papageno, a birdcatcher (bass)
Queen of the Night (soprano)
Monostatos, a Moor, chief of slaves in Sarastro's temple (tenor)
Pamina, daughter of the Queen (soprano)
Three boys, spirits (sopranos)
Speaker of the temple, a priest (bass)
Sarastro, high priest of the brotherhood (bass)
Two priests, armored men (tenor, bass)
Papagena, promised wife of Papageno (soprano)
Chorus (slaves, priests, attendants)
Orchestra:
2 flutes (1 doubles piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (double on basset horns), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, keyboard glockenspiel, strings
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
In the last months of his life, Mozart received major commissions for several very different works. During the summer of 1791 came a mysterious, anonymous commission to compose a Requiem. Also during the summer, he was engaged to write an Italian opera seria, La clemenza di Tito, for the upcoming coronation of Leopold II as king of Bohemia. And in a very different vein, he was commissioned to write a singspiel, a lighter opera with spoken German dialogue. This last work, which was commissioned by the Theater auf der Wieden in suburban Vienna, was Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).
Mozart had met Emanuel Schikaneder, the director of the theater, some ten years earlier, when the actor's company came to Salzburg, but he later also came to know him as a fellow mason in Vienna, a connection that proved to be significant for this opera. As an actor, Schikaneder was celebrated for his portrayal of Hamlet, but he was also a talented comic actor and theater director. In the few years immediately before The Magic Flute, he had produced three other "magic operas," which, like Mozart's, drew on German fairy tales, as well as on pseudo-oriental tales by Wieland and others.
Among Boston Baroque's discography are world-premiere recordings of two of Schikaneder's earlier "magic" operas: The Philosopher's Stone (Der Stein der Weisen) and The Beneficent Dervish (Der wohltätige Derwisch). The stories of these singspiels -- particularly The Philosopher's Stone -- as well as the characters in them have remarkable parallels to The Magic Flute. Schikaneder himself and members of his company not only sang but also composed surprisingly good arias for their own roles in these singspiels, and their work clearly influenced Mozart, not only in some of his musical ideas but also in teaching him about the strengths of these singers. who would play similar roles in The Magic Flute.
The premiere of The Magic Flute took place on September 30, 1791, some three weeks after the opening of his other commissioned opera, La clemenza di Tito. Mozart conducted the first performances with Schikaneder playing the role of Papageno. Mozart's friend Benedikt Schack played Tamino and, being a trained flutist, Schack also played Tamino's flute music himself. Schikaneder, however, mimed his playing of Papageno's magic glockenspiel, as Mozart amusingly tells his wife in a letter:
During Papageno's aria with the Glockenspiel I went behind the scenes, as I felt a sort of impulse today to play it myself. Well, just for fun, at the point where Schikaneder has a pause, I played an arpeggio. He was startled, looked behind the wings and saw me. When he had his next pause, I played no arpeggio This time he stopped and refused to go on. I guessed what he was thinking and again played a chord He then struck the Glockenspiel and said 'Shut up.' Whereupon everyone laughed. I am inclined to think that this joke taught many of the audience for the first time that Papageno does not play the instrument himself.
Among the female roles, Josepha Hofer, Mozart's sister-in-law, sang the Queen of the Night, and the 17-year-old Anna Gottlieb sang Pamina.
The opera was a triumph and received over 100 performances in a little over a year, but tragically, Mozart did not live to follow its progress. Toward the end of November, he became seriously ill, and on December 5, he died at the age of 35. Schikaneder continued to perform this grandest and most successful of his company's operas, giving more than 200 performances of it over the next decade. It became equally successful in other European cities. The great poet Goethe, who was inspired to write a sequel -- a project which he unfortunately did not complete -- wrote that its popularity was unprecedented: "No man will admit that he has not seen it. . . There has never been such a spectacle here before."
The libretto
Emanuel Schikaneder's libretto has been both highly praised and severely criticized. It has been considered a confused story by many. "Yet," as the poet W. H. Auden has written, "its very confusions, perhaps, give this libretto a fascination . . ." The magic in this opera and its focus on esoteric knowledge have led a number of scholars to draw parallels between The Magic Flute and Shakespeare's The Tempest. The struggle between light and dark, day and night, is here represented by the enlightened Sarastro and the evil Queen of the Night, but it has often been remarked that our understanding -- and Tamino's understanding -- of which side is the side of virtue changes between the first act and the second. Other inconsistencies have been pointed out, as well, but Schikaneder's telling of the story nonetheless continues to charm audiences after more than two centuries.
Beyond drawing on fairy tale sources, Schikaneder drew heavily on masonic literature and ideas, and it is clear from his letters that Mozart too took the masonic symbolism seriously. The notions of human brotherhood, the ritual trials by fire and water, the child of nature (Papageno) versus the initiates into the truth, the invocation of Egyptian gods, even the emphasis on the number three (three ladies, three boys, three slaves, the "masonic key" of three flats) all reflect the world of masonry. And the struggle between ignorance (darkness) and knowledge (light) also reflects the wider world of the European Enlightenment. But eighteenth-century enlightenment is not necessarily the same as that of the twenty-first century. Thus it is often pointed out that misogyny and racism play a role in this opera, as they did in the eighteenth century itself, with the Queen and her ladies, along with the wicked Moor, being destroyed and cast down into eternal night (gestürzet in ewige Nacht), while Sarastro and his brotherhood triumph in light, beauty and wisdom.
The music
Mozart's music for The Magic Flute is in many ways unlike anything else in his oeuvre. Much of the music has a folk-like simplicity that is true to the story without sacrificing depth. Low farce is combined with high drama, simple music with more sophisticated arias written for true opera singers, sometimes all within the same ensemble. For Papageno there is a folk style, for the Queen there are high, virtuosic arias, for Sarastro more serious bass music, and for Tamino, who had a "beautiful voice" according to Mozart's father, there is more lyrical writing. The wide range of styles is appropriate to each character in the opera, but it also reflects the kind of music that those same actors sang -- and, in some cases, wrote for themselves -- in Schikaneder's earlier magic operas. The finales of the two acts, on the other hand, are grander than anything that the company had produced up to that point. They are full-length opera finales with complex music and action.
As in his other operas, Mozart's orchestra was intimately involved in the drama. The three Eb chords that begin the overture set a serious tone at the outset, and they recur later as symbols in the rituals of the brotherhood. The sonority of trombones and basset horns (lower range instruments in the clarinet family) lend weight and seriousness to the ceremonies of Sarastro's priests.
The glockenspiel, which accompanies Papageno, raises special problems, particularly for a period-instrument orchestra. The traditional orchestral glockenspiel is a high-pitched percussion instrument with metal bars played by mallets. However, Mozart has written his part for a glockenspiel that is operated by a keyboard and that can therefore play normal two-handed keyboard music. Such instruments are rare, and opera companies often substitute a celesta. But in recent years one or two keyboard glockenspiels have been built specifically for performing The Magic Flute at the slightly lower pitch that is generally used by period instruments.
Orchestration Chart
This chart gives an overview of the work, showing which soloists and instruments are in each movement. It has also been useful in planning rehearsals, since one can see at a glance all the music that a particular musician plays. Red X's indicate major solo moments for a singer. An X in parentheses indicates that the use of that instrument is ad libitum.
This is a preview of the beginning of the chart. You can download or view a PDF of the whole chart here.
© Boston Baroque 2020
Boston Baroque Performances
Die Zauberflöte, K. 620
April 15 & 16, 2016
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Mark Streshinsky, stage director
Soloists:
Nicholas Phan - Tamino
Andrew Garland - Papageno
So Young Park - Queen of the Night
Leah Partridge - Pamina
Gustav Andreassen - Sarastro
Sonja Dutoit Tengblad - First Lady
Mara Bonde - Second Lady
Emily Marvosh - Third Lady
Owen MacIntosh - Monostatos
Charles Purdue - boy soprano
Dhruva Scholondorff - boy soprano
Kevin Liao - boy soprano
Stefan Reed - Armored Man I
Dana Whiteside - Armored Man II & Priest (speaker)
Sara Heaton - Papagena
May 5, 1989
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
American period-instrument premiere
Soloists:
Frank Kelley - Tamino
Sanford Sylvan - Papageno
Rebecca Sherburn - Queen of the Night
Sharon Baker - Pamina
Herbert Eckhoff - Sarastro
Darnelle Scarbrough - First lady
Marilyn Bulli - Second lady
Pamela Dellal - Third lady
William Cotten - Monostatos
Daniel O'Toole - boy soprano
Ian Zilla - boy soprano
Robert Mancini - boy soprano
Paul Houghtaling - Priest (speaker)
Martin Kelley - Armored man I
Donald Wilkinson - Armored man II
Lynn Torgove - Papagena
Arias from Die Zauberflöte, K. 620
December 31, 2014 & January 1, 2015
Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloists:
Sara Heaton, soprano
Andrew Garland, baritone
Arias from Die Zauberflöte, K. 620
January 1, 1991
Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloists:
Patrice Michaels Bedi, soprano
Matthew Lau, baritone