Symbolism In "the Magic Flute"

[silvy]

I know the above is a difficult one..

I wonder if anyone knows about the meaning of the different characters and elements in Mozart's "Magic Flute". Or else, if you know of a website where I could learn about this. I have just finished watching the Bergman film and was most intrigued (and delighted also), and I am eager to learn more.

Thanks so much in advance!

Silvy

[richard53dog]

I know the above is a difficult one..

I wonder if anyone knows about the meaning of the different characters and elements in Mozart's "Magic Flute". Or else, if you know of a website where I could learn about this. I have just finished watching the Bergman film and was most intrigued (and delighted also), and I am eager to learn more.

Thanks so much in advance!

Silvy

Silvy,

Isn't the movie delightful? I rewatched it a few months ago after a lapse of many years.

There is much symbolism in the opera, maybe the biggest element is the Freemason images. They were (are?) a very secret society. In Mozart's time they may have been a counterforce against the Hapsburg's

monarchy, but I'm a bit shaky on this.

My grandfather was a Freemason but would never tell me too many details about their secret greetings and rituals.

Richard

Edited March 14, 2006 by richard53dog

[dirac]

Silvy, the Wikipedia entry for The Magic Flute

is a decent place to start. Also a trip to the library can be very helpful, too – there are specific volumes devoted to the topic, and general opera reference books often have helpful bibliographies.

[silvy]

Thank you both richard53dog and dirac. I have read the Wikipedia link.

There is one fact that baffles me: why does Sarastro abduct Pamina, taking her away from her mother (too evil as her mother is), if Sarastro is supposed to be a "good guy"? Is this a question of religious beliefs, or what?

[Helene]

The original plan was for Sarastro to represent bad, and for the Queen of the Night to represent good. This was switched in the middle of writing the opera, which makes it less than consistent. In theory, in the new version, Sarastro kidnaps Pamina for her own good, to keep her away from her evil mother, whom she trusts. (This is hinted at in the Wikipedia article, which mentions his "paternalistic wisdom.") Sarastro's action is supposedly justified when the Queen of the Night sings that the price of loyalty to her is attacking Pamina's father. Pamina's character flaw is shown most vividly when she succumbs to despair -- being torn between two raging parents and having her world fall apart apparently doesn't justify this -- and threatens suicide.

Luckily, our hero arrives, Pamina takes his arm and accompanies him through the tests, and Sarastro cedes the kingdom to the yin/yang of male/female harmony, daylight, and enlightenment, unlike the schism that sent him underground. (The forces of darkness were in full daylight, while the good guys had to go underground.)

[Mel Johnson]

I think it's also important to remember that in The Magic Flute, there are a lot of topical things that anyone in Vienna, 1791 would have recognized right away, but we're in the dark, here and now. There is a whole raft of comic operas that have wonderful music by Franz von Suppe, for example, that were big hits in their day, but because the libretto is almost all political humor of 19th-century Vienna, they don't revive well, and all we know today are the overtures!

[Anthony_NYC]

This has to be one of the most analyzed operas ever. I don't know about good websites, but tons of books and articles have been written about it. The classic book for symbolism is by Jacques Chailley. If that's a bit much for you, I was always a big fan of the English National Opera Guides. Each one usually has a complete libretto plus a collection of good, intelligent essays. They can be hard to find in libraries and book stores, but the publisher now prints on demand.

[Anthony_NYC]

Incidentally, in case you haven't heard, Kenneth Branagh is currently filming a big-budget version in English. He's setting it in the First World War, and, according to The Guardian, "the three ladies who accompany the Queen of the Night will be recast as field nurses, and the feathered man, Papageno, will become the custodian of canaries used to detect lethal gas." Sigh. On the positive side, Stephen Fry is adapting the libretto (so maybe the updating is tongue-in-cheek?), and Sarastro is sung by Rene Pape.

[Ed Waffle]

A few suggestions:

An exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) book is “The Magic Flute Unveiled: Esoteric Symbolism in Mozart’s Masonic Opera” by Jacques Chailley. He knows the libretto and score extremely well and gives a scene by scene breakdown of Masonic content in both. While I don’t agree with all of his points—and don’t have the depth or breadth of knowledge to understand some of them—the book is a wonderful help in appreciation this opera. Chailley divides the main characters into two opposing groups—one is the sun, fire and air; the other is the moon, water and earth. Much of the action in the opera is the movement (for example) Papgeno from serving the Queen of the Night to the service of Sarastro and Monostatos’s journey in the opposite direction. Chialley explores how the myths of initiation, especially as part of the rituals and symbols of Freemasonry are all over the place in “The Magic Flute.

Nicholas Till’s book “Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas” has an excellent chapter on “The Magic Flute”. He also notes the initiation legends, discussing it in light of the work of Joseph Campbell, while being careful to note that Campbell didn’t mention this opera once in his many books on mythology. Till looks at the power of art, especially music, to redeem humankind from it subjection to its base nature and to reunite humanity with a) the cosmos; b) god; c) its own higher essence or d) something else entirely. Till also knows the opera backward and forward. I absolutely love the subtitle of this book.

The idea that the libretto changed halfway through is one that is no longer universally accepted. Both Chailley and Till, as well as other knowledgeable Mozartians read the shift of the Queen and Sarastro and those who serve each of them from good to bad or light to dark as supported by the symbolism and structure of the libretto. I tend to agree with those who see it as a bit of a patched together pastiche that Mozart and Schikender put together to get onstage.

The point concerning the topicality of much of “The Magic Flute” is most important. I don’t know if anyone has explicated all of the references that are specific to Vienna in 1791 and the issues or people to which they referred. If so, if would be of interest only to specialists.

Rene Pape as Sarastro? Outstanding! Rene Pape is as good a bass as I have heard in a long time.

[dirac]

I'm cautiously optimistic about the film version. Rene Pape? Cool.

Thank you for that link, Anthony_NYC. Peter Moores sounds like a good man to have around.

The $27m (£15.2m) venture, which starts shooting in January, is being financed by the 73-year-old Littlewoods heir Peter Moores, whose charitable foundation has supported opera recordings sung in English for decades.

Thanks also to everyone who's posted so far, and to Ed for the very useful description of the Chailley book, which I've heard of but not read.

[canbelto]

I want to add that it's strange, but when I stopped trying to figure out all the symbols, that's when I started enjoying The Magic Flute for what it is -- a delightful opera, with one of Mozart's best scores. That it's like a fairy tale -- it can be enjoyed almost without reservations (unlike the darker, more troubled da Ponte operas). And to note: Magic Flute was one of Mozart's instantaneous commercial successes, and has remained since the opera's premiere. It is possible just to sit back, cringe at the high F's, laugh at the silliness, and swoon at Pamina and Tamino. Particularly if Fritz Wunderlich is singing.

But if you want more books, there's also a slightly different take:

The Magic Flute: Die Zauberflote. an Alchemical Allegory by by M. F. M. Van Den Berk, M. F. M. Van Den Berk. It focuses on the fact that the Freemasons believed in alchemy, and that Die Zauberflote is an alchemical allegory, with much emphasis on the elements (fire, sun, water, etc) that have already been discussed here and in other books.

[bart]

Thanks, Ed Waffle and canbelto, for those references. To which I might add:

Joseph Kerman, "Mozart's Magic Marriage," New York Review of Books, Jan 12 2006.

In Kerman, I found two interesting citations:

David J. Buch, "Die Zauberflote, Masonic Opera, and Other Fairy Tails," in Acta Musicologica, Vol. 76, No.l 2 (2004). I have not tracked this down, but apparently it's good on the fairy tale singspiel tradition before MF.

Piter Branscombe, W.A. Mozart: Die Zauberflote, Cambridge Opera Handbook, Cambridge University Press.