WOLFGANG A M ADEUS MOZART
DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE
CONTENTS
P.
4
SYNOPSIS P.
6
MAGIC AND FLUTE INTERVIEW WITH MOSHE LEISER AND PATRICE CAURIER P.
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THE MAGIC FLUTE: PREDECESSORS AND SUCCESSORS OLIVER LÁNG P.
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THE MAGIC FLUTE AND EGYPT WILFRIED SEIPEL
P.
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BROTHER MOZART ZOLTÁN KOLNAY P.
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THE FREIHAUSTHEATER AUF DER WIEDEN P.
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NOTHING ANALYTICAL HERE! ANDREAS LÁNG P.
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PANTA RHEI WOLFRAM WAGNER P.
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IMPRINT
WOLFGANG A M ADEUS MOZART
DIE ZAUBER FLÖTE GRAND OPERA in two acts Text EMANUEL SCHIKANEDER
ORCHESTRA
2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo) 2 oboes / 2 clarinets (2nd doubling basset horn) 2 bassoons / 2 horns / 2 trumpets 3 trombones / timpani / bell piano violin I / violin II / viola cello / double bass
AUTOGRAPH Staatsbibliothek Berlin WORLD PREMIÈRE 30 SEPTEMBER 1791 Freihaustheater auf der Wieden FIRST PERFORMANCE 1 SEPTEMBER 1869 Wiener Hofoper DURATION
3 H 15 MIN
INCL. 1 INTERMISSION
DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE
SYNOPSIS The young prince Tamino is being pursued by a dangerous ser pent. When all seems lost, three mysterious ladies save the un conscious prince and kill the serpent. When Tamino revives, he meets Papageno. The three ladies give Tamino a portrait of Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night. The prince falls in love with the image and promises the Queen that he will rescue Pamina from the hands of Sarastro, who has carried her off. He sets out on his journey together with Papageno. To assist them, Tamino is given a magic flute and Papageno magic bells. Papageno, whom Tamino has sent ahead, meets Pamina, who is being badgered by the slave Monostatos. Papageno puts Monostatos to flight and wins Pamina for Tamino. When they set off again they are surprised by Sarastro and his retinue. In the second part of the opera, Tamino comes to recognise how good Sarastro in fact is. However, in order to become a full member of the priesthood he – and also Papageno – must pass several difficult tests. Tamino completes the trials admirably. As his reward, he is allowed to stand in Sarastro’s place as high priest and marry Pamina. Papageno, who was not so success ful, is nevertheless blessed with an equal partner – Papagena.
4 Previous pages: SCENE
RICHARD STRAUSS
MOZART’S MELODY IS - DETACHED FROM ANY EARTHLY FORM THE THING IN ITSELF, HOVERING LIKE PLATO’S EROS BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH, BETWEEN MORTAL AND IMMORTAL - LIBERATED FROM THE “WILL” - THE DEEPEST PENETRATION OF THE ARTISTIC IMAGINATION, OF THE UNCONSCIOUS, INTO THE ULTIMATE SECRETS, INTO THE REALM OF THE “ARCHETYPES”.
DIRECTORS MOSHE LEISER A N D PAT R ICE CAU R IER IN AN INTERVIEW WITH OLIVER LÁNG
MAGIC AND FLUTE ol
You always work together as a directing duo. What does your production workshop look like? ml It’s very simple: The right half of the stage is mine, the left Patrice’s! (laughs). No, seriously: people often ask us that question, and it is one that is not easy to answer. We prepare for a production together, discuss it at length, and develop a kind of dialec tic reasoning. On the rehearsal stage, I am perhaps somewhat more active, while Patrice observes more, but after the rehearsal we discuss everything in detail. We really don’t have a division of labour in the sense of dramaturg/ director. ol But how do you arrive at a joint concept? Do you not have differ ent opinions on occasion? ml Yes, of course we do. But in every piece that we have worked on so far, there is a key point that touches both of us to the same extent. That is where we start. What follows is of course lengthy discussions, various starting points, approaches. But, as I said, dialectically over time we fall into line with each other. ol In The Magic Flute, what was the key point that touched you both? ml There are actually two: magic, and flute.
ol The magic stands for... ml ...lightness. Simplicity must always been preserved in this piece. We very deliberately make reference to the nature of suburban theatre, where, after all, this opera originated. We do not show an excess of symbols, a brooding intel lectual piece in which every element contains two or three sublevels. Natu rally audiences are intelligent enough to know that a snake can always also be something sexual. But it does not have to be interpreted in terms of depth psy chology! ol And the flute represents music? ml Yes. It’s quite simple: What can help us in life? What will support us through life’s trials? Music. Mozart and Schikaneder’s opera also tells us about that. ol Now you have used the expres sion life’s trials. In your con cept, is The Magic Flute a kind of comingof-age novel? pc Human development is a signi ficant aspect of The Magic Flute. You say farewell to your youth, escape the forces of the subconscious and enter a world that is more strongly shaped by reason. That is at least one of the ways of see ing The Magic Flute. Initially Tamino is a young man who has yet to grow up.
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We see how at first he regards Sarastro as evil and must come to the realisation that he is reasonable. ml What do we see? A young man who sees a portrait and falls in love: “This portrait is enchantingly beau tiful...” Pamina too is young, she asks ecstatically: “Does he love me?” – with out even knowing him. Then come the trials, and both of them grow up. Let’s put it this way: at the beginning they are 17, at the end they are 30. Naturally, they must change colours somewhat, and, this is the other side of it, leave something behind in order to become integrated in society and be able to coexist in society. But that happens to each of us: when you grow up, you always lose something. ol And Papageno? Is he part of the coming-of-age novel? pc Yes. He is a cheerful character, nat urally portrayed in a slightly exaggera ted manner. He wants to live with no cares, and to a certain extent have a job and a wife. Unfortunately, he has the bad luck of meeting a prince who asks him to accompany him on a difficult journey. He is not really in the least in terested in any of that, but then he de cides to go along with it. ml Basically the two of them have the same story. They are not that different, they are two sides of the same person. We all have a Tamino in us, and a Papa geno as well. Sometimes one of them takes a stronger hold, sometimes the other. Sometimes we are interested in high ideals, but then we decide to stay home and watch television rather than hear an intellectual lecture on Goethe. It is not as if the one is more favoured than the other, that one is superior to the other. They are exactly the same feelings. In music as well. The differ
ence lies only in the question of “how”. If Papageno has a problem in his rela tionship later, he will go to the pub and drink a beer. If Tamino has one, he will go to a psychiatrist or read some Kant in an attempt to understand what love is. But the musical phrases at the end of the opera: “My Tamino! O what joy!” and “Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa...” are both equally beau tiful and moving. ol For you, to what extent is The Magic Flute grand symbolic theatre that contains secrets from Freemasonry, etc.? ml Well, here’s an image that appeals to me: Mozart wrote in a letter to his wife that he had played the bell piano that evening and intentionally made a mistake to confuse Schikaneder. THAT is what The Magic Flute is for me. There is a wink and sly humour in it. So many people have views about this opera being Mozart’s will, and how seriously one should take it all. Well... Naturally there are refer ences with Masonic symbols in them. But all that is less important. In this opera, Mozart had a wonderful oppor tunity to return to the little things. And there is something else: Schika neder! We should not overlook him; the libretto is far better than is often claimed. He was a great actor – a cele brated Hamlet in Munich, mind you – and a well-known man. On the poster for the première, his name was written much higher up and in much larger type than Mozart’s. He needed this success and these audiences to earn money for his theatre company. He played Papageno himself, because he knew how good the role is. It became a won derful synthesis: life, simplicity, theatre of magic, love. The opera encompasses all that. It should not be burdened down
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with deep thoughts. On the other hand, it is also not light entertainment for three-year-olds. They are welcome, but it is not an opera for children! pc In the final analysis, it is also about topics dealing with democracy. How people deal with it. What it is. How good it is. That it is not flawless, but it is the best alternative. After all, Sarastro engages in torture – the 77 lashes to Monostatos’ feet. However, we don’t want to turn it into a moral or political lesson, but guide people through the work. ml In my opinion, it is not a socioeconomic discussion about the differ ences in love between the various social classes. I also don’t believe that there is a grand message in The Magic Flute or that Mozart wanted to teach us what freedom means. To come back to the trials: they are not Olympic contests, but they reveal that when you go through life as a couple, everything is more serious. You have to stick together. ol If Sarastro is not exclusively good, does that mean that the Queen of the Night is also not exclusively bad?
ml That is exactly what it is about. Tamino and Pamina realise that the world is not just black and white. We have all realised that. There are really no Sarastros and no Queens of the Night as people, but only as principles. These principles are not: good versus evil, democracy versus monarchy, etc. What they are about is control or unbri dled emotion. The Queen of the Night displays unfiltered emotions: anger, hate, murderous intent, love. By con trast, Sarastro exercises more reason. He tries to establish a state of law. He is an individual with contradictions, something the Queen of the Night is not. You never see them in a dispute on the stage, because they are in fact only ideas. The Queen of the Night is more like youth, Sarastro more like maturity. ol And at the end? What should audiences take away from the opera? ml It is souvenir of The Magic Flute that you almost always leave the theatre with a smile on your face. With a good feeling. And I hope that will be the case with this product too!
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BENJAMIN BRUNS as TAMINO CHEN REISS as PAMINA
OLIVER LÁNG
THE MAGIC FLUTE: PREDECESSORS AND SUCCESSORS SOURCES At the centre is The Magic Flute. Related works before and after this take a very wide range of forms and use different legends. The starting point is the lite rary and dramatic (including operatic) world of the last third of the 18th cen tury, with a focus on the private the atres outside the Viennese city centre. There, Emanuel Schikaneder at the Freihaustheater auf der Wieden is com peting with his colleague Karl Marinelli at the Leopoldstädter Theater, two financially independent impresarios battling for the favour of the Viennese public of all classes, hungry for enter tainment. The authors were less concer ned with creating something unique or genuinely new – rather, they sought to capture the public’s taste, at the right moment and as fully as possible. Fairytales and magical stories were popular, so it is not surprising that one of the best-known and most important sources for the libretto was a collection of fairytales published by Christoph Martin Wieland (Dschinnistan, or A col lection of selected fairy tales), for example the fairytale Lulu or The Magic Flute.
But there were other sources, such as the novel Sethos by the Abbé Jean Terrasson, in a German translation by Matthias Claudius. The studies of the second act of The Magic Flute show the fingerprints of this work, and other ele ments – such as the snake and the trial by water and fire – are also to be found in Sethos. Is this a problem? Not for the time, when plagiarism and copyright had little relevance. Other pieces, such as the musical drama Das Sonnenfest der Brahminen (The solar festival of the Brahmins), staged as competition at the Leopoldstädtertheater, also show rela ted features, and the Freemason publi cation Über die Mysterien der Egyptier (On the mysteries of the Egyptians) was also well-known and popular. As were probably numerous other related works, unknown to scholarship, which were presented and read here and there, and which the librettist was familiar with. People put together individual and pro mising elements in new ways, without worrying about the original author. Who was also possibly borrowing from another and even earlier author…
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CREATION, PREMIERE The first mention of The Magic Flute appears in a letter by Schikaneder to Mozart dated 5 September 1790, which reads: “Dear Mozart, I enclose the Paa Pa Pa, which I’m happy with.” Scholars assume that this is the duet between Papageno and Papagena, possibly in an original form. It is no longer possible to establish whether the plan for The Magic Flute already existed, or whether this was an occasional piece. In any event, the composition of The Magic Flute took concrete form in early 1791, although this was followed by an inter ruption during which Mozart wrote La clemenza di Tito, an opera seria, in just a few weeks. For the final rehearsals for The Magic Flute in autumn 1791, Mozart added the overture and the March of the Priests, as his catalogue of works – two days before the premiere – shows: „The opera: The Magic Flute – a March of the Priests, and the over ture.“ The premiere of The Magic Flute was on 30 September at the Freihaus theater auf der Wieden, and was a great success, although not a sensational one. However, this would soon follow.
LEGENDS The Magic Flute is often suspected of falling into two parts. Initially, the Queen of the Night seems to be a good character, a caring mother, while Saras tro is evil, but then the picture shifts, and their positions are reversed in the second act. It is frequently claimed that this was due to the success of Kaspar, der Fagottist or Die Zauberzitter at the Leopoldstädter Theater, which had similar plots, so that Schikaneder deci
ded in the middle of writing to change the plot of The Magic Flute, to give it a different slant. However, as noted ear lier, there were general models at the time of promising pieces, with a recur rent buffet of plot elements for com bining, which makes it questionable whether the librettist would have been bothered at all by similarity, since the public was already more or less fami liar with all the elements of the opera. Another argument against the “split” theory is that Mozart did not follow the sequence of the action in his com posing, and had set parts of the first and second acts to music even before the premiere of Kaspar. Another wellknown legend about the origin of the opera is equally impossible to verify. The author and performer Karl Ludwig Giesecke, employed at the Freihaus theater and shown in the theatre flier as the First Slave in the premiere of The Magic Flute, claimed later that he, and not Schikaneder had written most of the libretto for The Magic Flute. It may have been common practice in the theatre of the times for ideas, sec tions and passages of text from several authors to be included in a work, so that it is possible that individual ele ments are due to Giesecke – but there is nothing beyond this statement to sug gest that Schikaneder did not write the piece, and merely put his name on the libretto.
SEQUELS After the success that The Magic Flute soon became, a successful theatrical impresario like Emanuel Schikaneder could be expected to look for a sequel. In 1798, the Freihaustheater premiered a work called Der Zauberflöte zweyter
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Theil. Das Labyrinth oder: Der Kampf mit den Elementen (The Magic Flute: Part II. The labyrinth, or the struggle with the elements), where the Queen of the Night returned to renew her strug gle with Sarastro. Here again, Tamino and Papageno (who finds his family and siblings) triumph, and the Queen of the Night and Monostatos are defeated. The music was by Peter von Winter.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also tried his hand at a sequel to the story of The Magic Flute, although this was never completed. On the one hand, an enquiry by the Wiener Hofoper came to nothing in the face of the librettist’s demands for a high fee, while on the other hand Schikaneder and Winter got in first with their sequel ahead of Goethe, so that the libretto remained just a fragment.
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KS RENÉ PAPE as SARASTRO
WILFRIED SEIPEL
THE MAGIC FLUTE AND EGYPT To think about The Magic Flute is to think about Egypt. This bald generalisation covers a line of association which has resulted since the premiere of Mozart’s opera in a wealth of constructions, inter pretations and misinterpretations, at least as far as the era’s notions of ancient Egyptian characteristics are concerned. In particular, the twelve Egyptianstyle sets designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for the premiere of The Magic Flute at Berlin’s Königliche Opera on 16 January 1816, which, thanks to Napo leon’s Egyptian expedition (1798-1801), were able to draw on a corrected, scien tifically based picture of Egypt (the Description de l’Egypte had been pub lished a few years earlier, following Vivant Denon’s publication of his draw ings), were to prove a decisive and last ing influence on the association of The Magic Flute with Egyptian references. Using Piranesi’s drawings, Schinkel designed an Egyptian architectural landscape of mysterious darkness and brilliant light, with magnificent temple façades, towering statues and moonlit sphinxes. Twelve years earlier in 1804, the pro duction of The Magic Flute in Kismar ton (Eisenstadt) under the direction of
Johann Nepomuk Hummel had already used scenery designed by court pain ter Carl Maurer, with pyramids, hiero glyphs, sphinxes and obelisks. The watercolours of Simon Quaglio, son of Giuseppe Quaglio, which were the basis for the production that opened Munich’s Nationaltheater in 1818, also contained a wealth of Egyptian motifs, such as sphinxes, pyramids and temple pylons. For the production of The Magic Flute at Vienna’s Kärntnertor Theater, also in 1818, Viennese architect and engraver Norbert Bittner designed a number of sets based on the Egyptian-style drafts by Anton de Plan, a Venetian painter and illustrator living in Vienna. In fact, these often distorted and misunderstood borrowings from Egyptian architectural symbols or decorative elements, such as pyramids, obelisks, fantastical hiero glyphs and sphinxes, were rooted in a tradition going back centuries, well be fore the pre-Baroque period. Since the time of Herodotus and Plato, Europe’s encounters with Egypt had been marked by particular respect and even admiration for the pharaonic culture and its works. Over the centu ries, and particularly in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the passion for
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Egyptian cultural relics which had be come Egyptomania in imperial Rome preserved Egyptian motifs as material and spiritual elements of craftsman ship, design, fashion and architecture. The study of hieroglyphs in the Renais sance, an early – if vain – attempt to wrest the ultimate secrets of the world from the Egyptian hieroglyphs, also gave rise to a “pre-scientific” picture of Egypt, decisively influenced by ancient writers and centred in Rome. In his essay on Winckelmann, Goethe speaks of Rome as “the place where, in our view, the whole of antiquity is fused into one”. Even today, there are more obelisks in this city than in the whole of Egypt. Anyone entering the cathedral at Siena will tread the magnificent mosaic floor with its representation of Hermes Trismegistos, “thrice-greatest Hermes”, a syncretistic fusion of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Thot. As a master of astrology, alchemy and medi cine, and credited with the invention of writing, he was regarded as the author of the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of ancient writings translated in 1471 by Marcilio Ficino, drawing on Hellenistic and Neoplatonic originals, but with a clearly Egyptian foundation. When a new move to decipher Egyp tian hieroglyphs emerged in the 17th century, its driving force was Atha nasius Kircher, a Jesuit father born in Germany and working at the Collegium Romanum in Rome, whose oversym bolic treatment of the Egyptian picto grams confused understanding of the written language for centuries. This was accompanied by growing num bers of books of engravings of ancient Egyptian monuments, mostly from princely collections, for example by the Benedictine B. de Montfaucon
(L’Antiquité explicée et représentée en figures, 15 volumes with 1,120 pictures, 1719-1724), followed by Count Claude de Caylus (Recueil d’antiquités ég yp tiennes, étrusques, grecques et romaines, 7 vols., 4,000 objects, 1752-1767). Another work embedded solidly in the prescientific view which is never theless significant because of its influ ence is the 1721 volume of engravings by J. B. Fischer von Erlach Entwurff einer historischen Architektur, which among other features gives the pyramids great prominence in the chapter “Wonders of the World”. This was one of the elements inspiring Giovanni Battista Piranesi to produce his engravings on “various ways of decorating fireplaces” (1789), which were another influence on Schinkel. Considering this background of re ligious and cultural history in the de cades leading up to the composition of The Magic Flute, the publications listed are significant for the borrowings and adoptions of Egyptian motifs, at least with regard to the work’s references and its reception. A preference for Egyptian style fashionable accessories in archi tecture, interior decorations and art, such as the “Stanza Egizia” at the Villa Borghese in Rome, Marie Antoinette’s bedroom in Versailles with an Egyptian sphinx on the ceiling, or the later “Egyp tian room” of Empress Ludovica at the Wiener Hofburg, all show only one side of the public Egyptomania of the period. Drawing on the past, the ancient script was a matter for admiration and respect for all the great scholars, includ ing Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), mentioned above as working at the Collegium Romanum, who discovered the laterna magica and had a decisive influence on Egyptology in the follow ing century through his numerous
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works, such as Oedipus Aegyptiacus and Sphinx Mystagoga. He also influenced the period through his work on hiero glyphs, which he believed had nothing in common with conventional scripts, being instead allegorical symbols con cealing the ultimate wisdom. His goal, in a theory dating back to Neoplatonic and Hermetic texts including Plutarch, Diodorus, the Church Fathers and ot hers, was to establish a world picture based on the wisdom of the Egyptians and their mysteries. There is no doubt that the Freemasonry of the 18th century also drew for its spiritual and historical foundations on the writings and ideas of Athanasius Kircher. Without going into the turbulent history of Viennese Freemasonry, we can say that they are summarised in Jan Assmann’s publica tion Die Zauberflöte: Oper und Mysterium (The Magic Flute: Opera and Mystery), which cites the anonymous text Über die alten und neuen Mysterien (Ancient and New Mysteries) an attempt to “identify the origin and ultimate goal of Freema sonry through systematic research into the ancient mysteries”. Just two years later, the Journal for Freemasons was pu blished in Vienna by the mineralogist and academic Ignaz von Born, head of the lodge “Zur Wahren Eintracht” (“To the True Harmony”) which he founded in 1781, and which Mozart belonged to from 1785. Its first issue contained Born’s important essay on Die Mysterien der Aegyptier (The Mysteries of the Egyp tians). This and the subsequent essays are dedicated to the mysteries of the ancient civilisations – the Hebrew kabbalah, the Mithraic, Indian, preChristian, Phoenecian, Caribbean, Eleu sian and Bacchanalian mysteries, the mysteries of the ancient Hebrews etc.
The essay on the Egyptian mysteries which opens the series was intended to emphasise their preeminence in time and substance. And this also gives us access to the basic material and spiritual ideas of The Magic Flute, whose ultimate interpretation we owe to Jan Assmann. The identification of Egypt as the home of wisdom and mystery, the search for redemption and the asso ciated trials, transformations and con secrations all began with the ancient writers Diodorus and Plutarch, and also (for example) in the Adventures of Lucius in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. The writings of these and other ancient authors, such as the Church Fathers, passed down and commented by 17th century scholars such as Athanasius Kircher, were the subject of the acade mic controversies of the Freemasons not only in Vienna but also in Germany, England and France. A key catalyst in Freemason literature is the English bishop and classical scholar William Warburton. In his three-volume work The Divine Legation of Moses (1738-1741), he also covered the ancient mysteries, to which he attributed a constitutional function. The initiates and future neo phytes, tested and liberated in a process of disillusionment in which the gods are revealed as a fiction, are shown the One God, who rules over the world in mystery as the ultimate goal and origin of the world. The parallels with and re ferences to The Magic Flute are obvious. Schikaneder’s libretto can accord ingly be seen as having a much disrup ted Hellenistic religion of the mysteries as a conscious or unconscious under lying idea, in which the longstanding tradition of links with “classical” Egypt (where we can speak of such, weakened as they are by the diverse breaches in
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transmission, gaps and misunderstand ings by interpreters and copyists) is perceptible in only a few, barely visi ble threads passing through the filter of Hellenistic and early Christian and Neo platonic ideas and writings. The Isis mysteries handed down by Plutarch and the general ideas associated with Orpheus and the Eleusinian mysteries and passed down and revived in the spi ritually important time of the Enlighten ment as a counter to apocalyptic ideas, were accordingly seen by the Freema sons as originating in Egypt, the ultimate home of religion and mysteries. As a result, The Magic Flute is a drama of the mysteries, in which an initiation ritual (as a trial for Tamino) is embedded in a fabulous libretto and stage setting whose Egyptian-style realisation shows the location and time of the action. But how much of Schikaneder’s text and libretto is “genuinely” Egyptian? Based on the title The Secrets of Egypt that he (and Mozart?) had originally planned, as stated in various periodical advertisements before the premiere, a number of stage directions in Schika neder’s libretto can also be seen as references to Egypt as the setting for the opera’s action. While the temple landscape is presented in historically “neutral” terms at the start, and the Queen of the Night is seated on a throne whose transparent stars are by no means Egyptian, the ninth scene in the first act calls for a “transformation into an Egyptian room, with a beautiful divan by a splendid Turkish table”. The di rections for the three temples in the fif teenth scene are again neutral in terms of location, and give the stage designers carte blanche. Sarastro’s triumphant carriage in the eighteenth scene “drawn by six lions” is also oriental, rather than
Egyptian. The start of the second act is set in a forest of palms. “All the trees are silver, their leaves gold. Eighteen bases of leaves, a pyramid on each, and a large black horn set in gold, the largest pyramid in the middle…” Sarastro’s opening words refer to the “servants of the great gods Osiris and Isis in the Temple of Wisdom”, to whom Tamino will subsequently be delivered. “Then he is delivered to Osiris and Isis, and will feel the joys of the gods…” Schika neder’s following stage direction at the start of the second act also makes the Egyptian setting obvious. “The theatre is transformed into a short atrium of the temple, where ruins of fallen pillars and pyramids are seen together with some thorn bushes. On each side are practical tall ancient Egyptian doors, showing a number of buildings to the side.” The next reference to Egypt is in the description of the twentieth scene, where “the theatre is transformed into vaul ted pyramids”. The “Egyptian priests” also carried lighted pyramids in their hands. This is matched by the chorus of the priests (no. 18): “O Isis and Osiris, what joy! The dark night vanishes in the radiance of the sun.” In scene 28, when Tamino is led by two men “on whose helmets a flame burns into a rocky landscape”, the guides read him “the transparent writing on a pyramid. The pyramid is in the middle...” For the later duet of the armed men, “the enlightened man will then be able to devote himself entirely to the mysteries of Isis” shows again the content and goals of The Magic Flute, clearly embedded in an Egyptian setting expected and even assumed by the public even at the premiere. While the stage could perhaps be interpreted as a Utopian setting, with out limits in time, space and references,
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as Jan Assmann does, I believe that Egypt imposes itself on the awareness of the unbiased observer and hearer, compared to a neutral “geographically neutral” interpretation, even without reliance on the Egyptian-style sets of Schinkel or Quaglio mentioned above. Clearly, the significance of the names as links to an Egyptian setting is not entirely conclusive, however much the names Pamina and Tamino seem to include Egyptian components. Saras tro can also be seen as a corruption of Zarathustra/Zoroaster, who as a son of Noah’s grandson Mizraim could also appear as an Egyptian. The other names, Papageno and Papagena, are not Egyptian, and Monostatos is a Greek derivation meaning “sole, or best iso lated”. It is curious that he is spelled “Manostatus” in Mozart’s score. The sources of Schikaneder’s libretto, as analysed and reconstructed in nume rous studies, clearly show a reference to an Egyptian setting, as do the places lis ted above in the libretto and stage direc tions, even if Peter Schaffer’s engravings of the premiere in Vienna in 1795 only hint at Egypt. The recurrent references to Egyp tian ideas and images in the stage di
rections and libretto, quite apart from the gods Isis and Osiris, the Egyptian priests and their actions, together with the representations of the subterranean passages below and within the pyramids as dark, hidden and secret places where the mysteries are enacted, the illumi nated inscriptions, the hieroglyphs on the pyramids, the pyramids housing the priesthood – everything is surrounded by an ancient Egyptian aura based in the knowledge and interpretation of the 18th century. Despite the emergence of a scientific and accurate understanding of ancient Egypt and its culture at the hands of Egyptologists building on Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition and the decipher ing of the hieroglyphs by François Champollion in 1822, neither The Magic Flute nor the country on the Nile itself have lost any of their fascination. The pyramids and the temples, the hiero glyphs and burial sites, the art and re ligion of the Pharaohs all remain the emissaries of a fascinating civilisation which is long past but still regarded with respect and admiration. In their way, Mozart and Schikaneder have created an immortal memorial to this, set in an enlightened philosophy.
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Next pages: PETER KELLNER as PAPAGENO GOLDA SCHULTZ as PAMINA
F R A N Z X AV E R N I E M E T S C H E K / I K N EW MO Z A RT, 179 8
THE ACCLAIM THAT THE MAGIC FLUTE RECEIVED EVERYWHERE, FROM THE COURT THEATRE TO THE WANDERING STAGE OF THE SMALL MARKETPLACE, IS UNPRECEDENTED. IN VIENNA IT WAS PERFORMED MORE THAN A HUNDRED TIMES IN ONLY THE FIRST YEAR OF ITS PUBLICATION.
ZOLTÁN KOLNAY
BROTHER MOZART In all Mozart’s extensive correspon dence, there is only one direct reference to his seven year membership in a Mason ic lodge. Popular rumours as sert that some letters were not merely censored, but deliberately disposed of at a later time. Mozart’s sister, for example, reports that his father Leo pold destroyed many letters. All that remains is the opening of a letter to Michael Puchberg, treasurer of the Masonic lodge “Zur Wahrheit”, whom Mozart frequently asked for smaller and sometimes larger amounts of money: “Honourable friend and Order brother”, he wrote to him... Other than perhaps a personally motivated, fundamental aversion to Freemasonry and the duty of lodge brothers to maintain secrecy, was there a reason why people should have tried to eradicate all traces of Mozart’s Maso nic activity, or why it would be prefera ble for him not to mention it in his own private correspondence? Perhaps we shall find an answer if we take a closer look at the standing of Free masonry in Austria in the 18th century. In a royal consent (“placet regium”), Maria Theresa refused to acknowledge the papal ban on Freemasonry, not because she looked favourably upon Masons – quite the contrary – but because she regarded these proscrip tions as interference in the internal
affairs of her empire. Naturally the ques tion remains open whether and to what extent her imperial husband Franz Stephan, who was a Mason, may have influenced her stance. At all events, the first Freema son lodge in Vienna was founded on 17 September 1742. It was called “Aux Trois Canons”, a name that is a play on the “Guidelines for the Instructional System of the three symbolic Grades: apprentice, fellow, master”. On 7 March 1743 the police forced their way into the temple on the orders of the empress and arrested all those present. Several days later, they were freed again thanks to the intervention and personal directive of “His Majesty, the most excellent Mason in Europe”, Emperor Franz Stephan. The lodge was officially closed, but its members secretly worked diligently on, so that by the time the emperor died in 1765 he is said to have attained the rank of Master of the Lodge. The trust the im perial couple had for each other must have been considerable... After several years of discord in all areas, in 1764 all the lodges in the empire were officially closed. This did not however prevent the “non-imperial” Masons from going about their work. In 1776 the lodge “Zur gekrönten Hoffnung” was established in Vienna, however under the patronage of the Berlin Grand Landlodge.
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BROTHER MOZART
No sooner had Joseph II become sole ruler, than he started implementing his ideas as an “enlightened despot”. Now Freemasons could carry out their work publicly. However, the emperor did not like the fact that religious and secular orders in his empire were subject to a foreign authority. In 1781, he therefore issued a veto to resolve this issue. In 1784, the independent “Austrian Grand Landlodge” was founded, eight months before Mozart was accepted into the association. The following year there was a huge increase in lodge activity, which seemed excessive even to the enlightened emperor. On 1 December 1785 he therefore drafted his famous “handbill”, also called “Masonic Decree”, which was pub lished in the Vienna Diarium on 21 De cember. The wording of the decree was truly alarming: “The so-called societies of Freemasons – so it was written – whose secrets are as little known to me as I am curious to learn about their tricks, are spreading and are now to be found even in smaller towns. These gatherings, if left to themselves, with out any guidance, may degenerate into excesses that will assuredly be detri mental to religion, order and morals...” – truly an “unexpected thunderbolt”, as one biographer of Mozart called it. A secret association was simply incom patible with an absolutist concept of the state and was contradictory to the intransigence of a man like Joseph II. This edict forced the Viennese Masons to reduce the number of their lodges to no more than three, with membership of no more than 180 in each. As a result nearly half of all Viennese Masons sud denly found themselves with no lodge to belong to. Now fast action was called for. On 24 December 1785, the Viennese
representatives of the Freemasons de cided that there should be only two combined lodges in the capital city. The first was given the name „Zur Wahrheit“, the second „Zur neugekrön ten Hoffnung“. Mozart was initiated as an apprentice before the imperial edict, namely on 14 December 1784, into the lodge “Zur Wohltätigkeit”, which a year later was to be merged with “Zur neugekrönten Hoffnung”. In his biography of Mozart, Volkmar Braunbehrens came to the conclu sion that Mozart was not someone who had “joined as a social opportu nity, in the hope of gaining personal advantages, ... but rather with the in ner conviction of ‘improving human race’ through self-improvement”. In his book Brother Mozart, Guy Wagner made the same determination: “Free masonry became an integral part of his artistic creation, and its interpretation reached its zenith in The Magic Flute, a unique depiction of the path into the light that the profane man travels down.” There is no need to doubt all this out of hand; however, it should be noted that there are no indications what soever to substantiate the claim that Mozart was a fundamentally trans formed man in the last seven years of his life as a result. It would seem that the wish was father to the thought here; as so often happens, we interpret the biography of the composer based on our own wishes. Whatever the case may be, Wolf gang Amadé was initiated – the written invitation from the lodge is a document that has been preserved. The evidence then peters out, and we know only that he was promoted to fellow on 7 January and in spring 1785 to master.
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BROTHER MOZART
After the admission of his composer colleague Joseph Haydn, another Ma sonic experience followed for Mozart: on 6 April 1785 his father was accepted into his lodge as an apprentice. On 24 April, the two of them attended a festive lodge meeting of the (old) “Gekrönte Hoffnung”. On this occasion, Wolf gang performed the cantata Die Maurer freude K 471. The next day Leopold drove Mozart back to Salzburg. His son was never to see him again. Following the death of Joseph II (in 1790), his brother Leopold II succeeded him on the throne. New challenges were in store for the Freemasons. Even the outbreak of the French Revolution a year earlier was attributed to the great conspiracy of Freemasons. In the so-called “confiden tial files of the Court and State Archives of Vienna” is a memorandum written by the Head of Police, Count Pergen, to Leopold II. In it, he states: “There can be no doubt that the French monarchy was overthrown by just such a secret society.” Nearly 50 days after the première of The Magic Flute Mozart entered a Masonic lodge for the last time. On 17 November 1791 he took part in the dedication of the new temple of his
lodge and performed his cantata Laut verkünde unsre Freude, K 623, which he had completed two days earlier. As it turned out, that was his very last composition. His wife Constanze was to write years later (1829) in a letter to an English publisher: “He had written a Masonic cantata that so delighted those for whom he had written it that he came home glowing with joy. ‘I knew that I had never written anything better.’ he said; ‘I believe it is the most beautiful of all my works.’” Fifteen days later he passed – as the Masons say – into the Eternal East. What about the so-called Masonic content of The Magic Flute? Some claim that this was woven in alongside the “magical” plot in order to give the characters a mysterious aura. Repre sentation of the induction of Prince Tamino does not entirely follow the rituals practised at the time in a Vien nese lodge; at most, Mozart extracted certain elements from those rituals and combined them skilfully with other, primarily ancient Egyptian mysteries, as well as some from the secret society novel and other sources, such as collec tions of well-known fairytales.
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B RU N O WA LT E R / 1 9 5 6
AND JUST AS THE MELODIES OF TAMINO’S FLUTE PROVED THEIR PROTECTIVE MAGIC EVEN IN THE BLAZE OF FIRE AND FLOOD OF WATER, JUST AS THEIR BLESSING ALSO BENEFITED PAMINA AND PAPAGENO, SO EVEN TODAY, AND PERHAPS TODAY MORE THAN EVER, THE BENEFICENT, HELPFUL AND JOYFUL POWER OF MOZART’S MUSIC PROVES ITSELF TO ALL TO WHOM IT SPEAKS.
THE FREIHAUS- THEATER AUF DER WIEDEN THE THEATRE WHERE THE MAGIC FLUTE WAS PREMIÈRED In the beginning was the Leopoldstadt Theatre, first opened by Karl Marinelli in 1781. This was Vienna’s first suburban theatre, offering a varied programme ranging from bur lesques to serious dramas, and even musical theatre. In 1787 it was followed by the Theater auf der Wieden, also known as the Freihaustheater auf der Wieden, which was opened on 14 October 1787. This new theatre was part of the Freihaus complex, which contained several buildings belonging to the Starhemberg family, inclu ding a church, a tavern, hundreds of apartments – and of course a theatre (today: around Operngasse 23-32). The theatre was a two-storey building, approximately 30 me tres long and 15 metres wide, with seating for about a thousand people. Its first principal was Christian Rossbach, who, however, did not have much luck and threw in the towel after just five months. Johann Friedel and Eleonore Schikaneder – who had separated from her husband Emanuel Schika neder – directed the theatre from 1788 to 1789. However, Friedel soon died of consumption. Shortly after this, Eleonore was reconciled with her husband Emanuel, who returned to Vienna and took over the position of impresario. On 12 July 1789 he opened his first season with Der dumme Anton im Gebirge or Die zween Anton with himself in the title role and a libretto also written by him. Further successful pieces of popular theatre followed. In 1791, the première of The Magic Flute took place at the theatre. Almost a decade later, Schikaneder’s contract with Prince Starhemberg was terminated due to the “established fire hazard in the house”. BENJAMIN BERNHEIM as TAMINO
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ANDREAS LÁNG
NOTHING ANALYTICAL HERE! Is it possible to talk about music mean ingfully? The literature dealing with popular compositions fills literally hundreds of metres of shelving for each work in this category – and in the case of The Magic Flute probably thousands of metres. But ultimately, it is only in isolated aspects that the most erudite experts in a given subject have so far come closer to the actual essence of the music under discussion – and this is unlikely to change in the future. Music communicates primarily through hear ing, and only in rudimentary terms through full pages of text. And above all, who reads this sort of thing? Arti cles in this genre which are artistically inclined require corresponding talent on the part of the author, which is rare, and the more academic articles offer little pleasure, and also demand a cer tain level of education on the part of the reader. As passionate opera or concert goers, people are familiar with the arti cles in the programme booklets deal ing more or less analytically with the work to be heard. Actually, people are not really familiar with them, because by the second paragraph at the latest – with all the talk of e.g. sixth chords, suspensions, resolutions, leading notes and the like – most people have simply stopped reading. But a programme without an arti cle on the music presented can easily be seen as incomplete. In this particu lar case, it means asking what can or should be said about the music of The
Magic Flute which is neither too aca demically analytical, and so uninter esting for most, nor endlessly repeats familiar statements, which are also of limited interest? But perhaps this is not true after all? Perhaps people like to read the clichés and platitudes which seem to capture the genius of Mozart, or the aspects of genius in The Magic Flute so accurately, given that it is impossi ble to capture these aspects any other way? We will, after all, never be able to identify in detail just what is so wonderful in Pamina’s G minor aria, any more than we can explain why the overture to The Magic Flute is felt to be so well-proportioned, sublime, great and exhilarating. We could go on for hours about the quintet in the first act (the Three Ladies, Tamino, Papageno) and praise the music with out ever understanding why. Cer tainly, the formal diversity helps ex plain why everyone finds something new for themselves in The Magic Flute, depending on their mood: the baroque elements in the scene with the Two Armed Men, the merry musical comedy in the Papageno numbers, the Italian seria elements with the Queen of the Night, the sacred and declamatory ele ments going back to Gluck in the scenes involving the Sarastro priesthood (Mo zart was accused of musical plagiarism in these, although he denied it). But we find formal diversity in the works of less important composers
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NOTHING ANALYTICAL HERE!
whose operas fail to evoke such a re sponse in the audience – so the genius of The Magic Flute must have some other basis. Does Mozart perhaps come closer to the truth in his musical repre sentation of the whole human universe of emotions than other composers, par ticularly later ones, so that regardless of the form every listener finds themselves and their emotional world in a perfor mance of The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Some au thors have described Mozart as more emotionally honest than Chopin with his quasi-professional sentimentality. Can this also be extended to other com posers? However, the fundamental impact of Mozart remains remarkable, parti cularly in The Magic Flute. A catharsis with Mozart differs essentially from one with Wagner or Puccini. After listening to a complete Götterdämme rung, nobody wants to listen to a per formance of Das Rheingold, or go on to Turandot immediately after a perfor mance of La bohème. By contrast, after listening to The Magic Flute we could happily listen to some Figaro or Così, or follow a performance of The Marriage of Figaro with some Magic Flute. One is not always in the mood to listen to a Wagner opera, but Mozart is almost always welcome. One thing is certain: Mozart’s music is never as dark as Wagner’s, for exam ple at the start of the third act of Sieg fried. Nor does Mozart’s music ever try to assert itself, to proclaim the under lying will, like Beethoven’s music, for example. In contrast to Wagnerians, Mozart lovers have no desire to make an impact on their environment, and vice versa: Mozart’s music will have far fewer bitter foes among music lovers
than any other composer’s. But none of this explains anything, it merely shows what many listeners feel without being able to express it. And The Magic Flute in particular? What is the status of this piece, which – depending on our point of view – is either the last or the penultimate stage work among Mozart’s operas? Is this really the pinnacle of his work, as we often read – primarily in the older lit erature? Is The Magic Flute really “the very greatest German opera”, as Beet hoven claimed? Is the Italian element in The Magic Flute really just a “warm ing secondary current” as the famous German musicologist Hermann Albert commented approvingly in 1920? Or is it inferior to Figaro or Così in terms of compositional refinement – for exam ple, in the ensembles, as people say dis missively, overlooking (among other things) the extremely subtle instrumen tation in The Magic Flute? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said that the same wind creates the dunes and levels them again. This comparison applies to The Magic Flute in that many find their first love for this opera in the same appar ently naïve folksong-style Papageno melodies that they later dismiss, as serting that parts of The Magic Flute are just for children. More attentive listen ers become more and more aware of the greatness in the piece on every hearing. Of course, art – unlike sport – offers no measurable means of determining better or worse, so that such ratings must always be subjective. Even so, the popularity of The Magic Flute – for most of the public and the performers – speaks for itself, and needs little or no help from the latest of the works in the thousands of metres of literature we started out with.
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WOL F R A M WAG N E R
PANTA RHEI The Magic Flute! What charm issues from the name alone! Many music lo vers have early memories associated with this opera, and the words “The Magic Flute” may also conjure up images of shining children’s eyes. As a child, my eyes must also have shone as I listened often to my parents’ tape recordings and also to the radio re cording (from the 1960s, I believe) from the Salzburg Festival. As I listened, I en visioned the scenery, imagined a magic forest with fairies with beautiful eyes and charming elves with pointed ears who whispered fond words into one’s ear, causing amazement with a mysteri ous murmur and laughter with sweetly performed charms. To this day, I feel a pleasant shiver combined with longing when I think of it. And then there are splendid things like a dragon, a star-bla zing queen (I could not imagine exactly what this was, but the description im pressed me), a funny birdman, as well as a prince and a wise priest, along with many other interesting characters. In my boy soprano, I sang along with all the arias as I played the tape re corder. I was absolutely convinced that I was singing just as high as the Queen of the Night in her coloratura and just as low as Sarastro in his teaching of wis dom. I was equally sure that I would one day be just as courageous as the prince and would win just as beautiful a wife,
or at least as charming a wife as Papa geno had. And naturally I would not shun danger in order to save my chosen one from every danger, and I would ad here to my vow of silence, if I had to. However, what touched me especially was what gave the opera its name, the magic flute itself, or the melody with which it, the flute, soothed wild an imals. This wonderful sequence of notes awakened in me the ardent desire to play the flute myself some day. Accordingly, I learned this rather exotic instrument, initially taking lessons from a hobby flautist at the school of music in Steyr and later from a member of the Vienna Philharmonic at the Academy of Music in Vienna. And so quite unexpectedly I landed in a career as a musician. There are various reasons why it ended up not being the flute (which I still play occa sionally) but composition that domina tes by life as a musician. At all events, it was my pursuit of the flute that caused me to become a musician, and it was The Magic Flute with its enchanting flute melody that took my path in that direction. Panta rhei, everything flows, every thing changes; constant change can be found on a number of different levels in this singspiel. It is what keeps the minds of audience members constantly active, for one thing because of the multiplicity of scenes, the many quick transforma
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PA N TA R HEI
tions on the stage, for another because of the inscrutability of the characters. The Queen of the Night is at first the prince’s mighty rescuer, then a tor mented mother seeking help; finally, she turns out to be a power-hungry, murderous despot of dark forces. It took me some time to come to terms with that. By contrast, the fact that Sarastro’s image changes from a cruel, evil kid napper to a wise, benevolent do-gooder satisfied me straight away. I was also fascinated by the way that the minor characters change their behaviour in a flash: wild animals and evil assailants suddenly dance and sing to the sounds of the flute and glockenspiel, dangerous situations turn suddenly into comic situations, anxious moments such as the threat to commit suicide pronounced by Pamina and – once again combined with comedy – Papageno are resolved in the twinkling of an eye. Quite honestly, I have no idea how long it has been the case in literature that – as happens in modern detective stories and specifi cally in The Magic Flute – you only find out late in the story who the real villain is. Consecutive and simultaneous contradictions are one of the key fac tors contributing to the special nature of this successful opera: the clear, at times even folksy tunefulness of the melodies on the one hand and the highly musical fugue passages in the overture and cunning cantus fir mus feats on the other. Additionally, direct effects appealing even to the little-educated mind are just as pre sent as highly sophisticated textual demands. With its funny Papageno-
Pagagena dialogues and the mysterious, exciting, admittedly somewhat abstruse storyline (but who looks so closely at that...) the text appeals as much to the simple, even the childish mind as much as to the intellectually educated indivi dual who feels inspired to a profound train of thought by the symbolism pre sented so conspicuously in the opera. There are also any number of possibi lities for identifying with the charac ters. Who would not want to be as wise and powerful as Sarastro, as valiant as Tamino, as funny as Papageno, as char ming as Pamina, and as eerily beautiful as the Queen of the Night? Through all the changes and transformations there are also constant values creating a thread through the entire work, a de tail that fits into this generally dichoto mous image: love, bravery and wisdom; the importance of these three remains unshaken. With this many ingredients for success, the opera could not fail. And just as with the magical story of Harry Potter today, back then there was also a sequel, or even several attempts at one. Goethe started the poem for a sequel, although it was evidently never set to music. Schikaneder himself also took up the pen to write the libretto for a second Magic Flute opera with music by Peter von Winter; according to wikipedia it was performed 67 times in Vienna, once again with Schikaneder as Papageno. However, it was never as successful as Mozart’s The Magic Flute. It is clearly in large measure the quality of the music that determines whether an opera will last decades or even centuries, even if it is designated merely as a “singspiel”.
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Previous pages: HANNA-ELISABETH MÜLLER as PAMINA FEDERICA GUIDA as QUEEN OF THE NIGHT
IMPRINT WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE SEASON 2023/24 PREMIÈRE OF THE PRODUCTION 17 NOVEMBER 2013 Publisher WIENER STAATSOPER GMBH, Opernring 2, 1010 Wien Director DR. BOGDAN ROŠČIĆ Music Director PHILIPPE JORDAN Administrative Director DR. PETRA BOHUSLAV General Editors SERGIO MORABITO, ANDREAS LÁNG, OLIVER LÁNG Design & concept EXEX Layout & typesetting MIWA MEUSBURGER Cover concept MARTIN CONRADS, BERLIN All performance photos by MICHAEL PÖHN Printed by PRINT ALLIANCE HAV PRODUKTIONS GMBH, BAD VÖSLAU TEXT REFERENCES All texts were taken from the Zauberflöte programme of the Vienna State Opera (premiere on 17 November 2013). All texts were original contributions to the programme of the Vienna State Opera. IMAGE REFERENCE Cover: Eckart Hahn: Blume (Flower), 2018, Acrylic on canvas, 55 x 40 cm Private Collection, Courtesy Pablo’s Birthday, New York Scenes: Michael Pöhn / Wiener Staatsoper GmbH (Pages: 2-3, 9, 13, 20-21, 26, 32-33) ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS Andrew Smith. Reproduction only with approval of Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Dramaturgy. Abbreviations are not marked. Holders of rights who were unavailable regarding retrospect compensation are requested to make contact.
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