Unless we count his modest contribution, along with four other composers, to Der Stein der Weisen, The Magic Flute was a new type of opera for Mozart, at least in its handling of word-music-drama relationships.¹ It was less new in other ways; its moral content is anticipated in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, where, as again in La clemenza di Tito, the characters’ fate lies in the hands of a benevolent autocrat (here Sarastro). The Introduction, arias, ensembles, and multisection finales followed naturally from Mozart’s recent Viennese comedies, but with significant differences. Spoken dialogue bears much of the weight of action and characterization conveyed in opera buffa by simple recitative. At dramatic high points, Italian opera uses orchestrally accompanied recitative (the voice supported by expressive instrumental gestures), usually leading to an important aria. In The Magic Flute, orchestrated recitative occurs mainly in the finales, which would be unusual in opera buffa.²

The variety of forms and the passages in finales that are neither recitative nor aria look ahead to the more continuous opera of the next century. From a post-Wagnerian standpoint, linking stage action to musical design may seem unremarkable. But closed, fully cadenced forms were the eighteenth-century norm, despite the example of Gluck’s later operas, where recitative, arioso, and aria come closer thanks to his abandonment of simple recitative. The long finales of The Magic Flute are unlike those of the Viennese comedies; they do not follow Lorenzo Da Ponte’s prescription for few if any scene-changes, the music accelerating as characters fill the stage. The finales of The Magic Flute require several scene-changes, and the spectacle assumes greater importance. Another novelty is that two “characters” are multivoiced, but sing as a unit: the Three Ladies attendant on the Queen, and Three Genii or “Knaben” (boys, although the original singers were female). And unlike Viennese opera buffa, the opera makes serious use of a chorus.

Overture and Introduction

Overtures are the composer’s domain, without text and with the stage as yet unseen. Yet, perhaps following Gluck’s precedent, Mozart linked his overtures to the dramatic action, to the point of prequotation (the overtures were written last).³ So, although the dramaturgy of The Magic Flute is remote from that of Gluck’s late operas, the overture shows what must be deliberate connections to what follows. The overture offers a sense of the numinous, of energy, and of intellectual engagement – all elements that play a significant role in the unfolding action – but it is not a symphonic précis of the opera, unlike the overture written shortly before, to La clemenza di Tito, which has been subtly interpreted by Daniel Heartz as a “dramatic argument.”⁴

Schikaneder’s public may have expected comedy, sentiment, and fantasy, but the overture prepares for higher styles. The Adagio “alla breve” (two half-note beats per measure rather than four quarters) is not so slow, and is short but solemn. The opening is rhythmically related to the “threefold chords” (“dreimalige Akkord”). In the Allegro, these are “quoted” from Act 2, dividing the sonata exposition from the development. The rest suggests mystery: strings, their dotted rhythm a hushed reminder of the opening, introduce minor coloring, punctuated by soft trombone chords. In the second finale, trombones present a similar dotted rhythm to introduce the chorale and “learned” (imitative) texture of the scene with two Armored Men. This full orchestration with trombones – which retain their association with religion and the supernatural – is unique in Mozart’s overtures (in Don Giovanni, trombones play in the “statue” scenes, but not when the same music opens the overture; his other Vienna operas use no trombones). Fugue, not a standard component of comic opera (despite the ending of Don Giovanni), is a principal topic of the Allegro, which combines fugue and sonata form – a procedure new to Mozart’s overtures but anticipated in the finale of the String Quartet in G, K. 387.⁵ Unlike that movement, however, the overture has only one well-defined theme, the fugue subject, which is also used for a brilliant tutti, then combined in the secondary key area with graceful woodwind solos (from mm. 57 and 74). The “threefold chords” intrude on the sonata design, bringing the music virtually to a halt (mm. 96–102). The development responds by further resourceful handling of the theme, largely in minor keys, with some strict canonic imitation (basses and violins, from m. 116). The retransition, and Mozart’s compositional resourcefulness in combining the recapitulation with fresh developments (from m. 144), add to the surpassing quality of this overture, which remains a concert favorite despite the oddly intrusive “threefold chords.”

Sarastro’s last words (Act 2 finale) assert that as sunrise expels night, so does virtue overcome wickedness. The breakthrough from night into day is the central metaphor for progress toward enlightenment, and is repeatedly reflected in the music: already in the overture (Adagio–Allegro; stormy development–recapitulation), and in No. 1, headed “Introduction” (sic). The scene presents a rugged, hence dangerous, terrain as Tamino runs on, pursued by a monstrous serpent. The key, C minor, is the dark shadow of the overture’s E-flat. Marked rhythms, tremolo, and sweeping scales represent terror, using the topic identified as tempesta.⁶ As Tamino faints, a harmonic interruption (m. 40) brings release; the Ladies slay the monster and their “Triumph!” restores the overture’s E-flat. Such harmonic strokes are a feature of later scenes, marking significant turning points in the plot. The Ladies cannot trust one another, if left alone, not to be too affectionate toward the unconscious prince. Thus the dark (tempesta) turns not to light but to the first passage of comedy, with a mild sexual charge. The keys follow the action: E-flat modulates to closely related G minor (by m. 119), followed by a lively G major in 6/8 and a furious stretta, closing in the tonic C, but in the major, at a faster tempo.⁷ No. 1, therefore, is an introduction to dramatic contrasts – terror; triumph; popular, if slightly misogynist, comedy – and to the opera’s principal tonalities.

A Tonal Overview

After E-flat, C, and G, the principal keys used in The Magic Flute are F and B-flat, neither of which frames a finale; nor does G, but its association, in major and minor modes, with Pamina and Papageno gives it an importance comparable to the framing tonalities.

A word of caution is needed in connection with keys. The subject offers more than the usual temptation to search for key symbolism, but while E-flat, the overall frame, has been associated with Freemasonry partly because it has three flats, it is also used for the servants of the evil Queen (Introduction). Mozart also employed C, major and minor, for “Masonic” works. C minor (also with three flats) reappears in the second finale for the solemn chorale before the trials of initiation, but also for the last entry of the Queen and her minions, intent on violence. C major frames the first finale and reappears in the second for the trials (and so for both “magic flute” solos), but C is also the key of Monostatos’s aria as he prepares to rape Pamina. A composer’s hands cannot be tied by fixed connotations of keys, even within a single work.

Tonality on its own cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, good from evil. Mozart’s choice of keys reflects practical considerations, instrumental (since only a few were then available for natural trumpets) and vocal, reflecting Mozart’s concern to “fit the costume to the figure.”⁸ His chosen keys place notes from the tonic chord, normally the third (mediant) or the fifth (dominant), high but comfortably within his singers’ ranges. These are usually exceeded by no more than one degree, at moments of climax or intense expression.

C and E-flat suited Benedikt Schack (the first Tamino); as Abert remarks, “It is doubtless largely thanks to Schack that the role of Tamino is of such high quality.”⁹ In his aria (No. 3), high G (g′) is the mediant in the tonic chord, E-flat, and the highest notes are all a-flat′. His first-finale solo is in C, using both a-flat′ and a-natural′ above the dominant, g′.¹⁰ The keys of G and F suited the actor-singer (baritone) Schikaneder (the first Papageno); both his arias and his solo in the second finale (also in G) exceed the dominant by one degree, reaching e, d, and in the finale a poignant e-flat′ borrowed from the minor mode as he contemplates suicide. B-flat (the Queen’s first aria, No. 4) and F (within the second, D minor, aria) invited Josepha Hofer’s top note (f′′′), approached by a leap, and probably attained by a vocal harmonic; it is noticeable that in her second aria (No. 14) f′′′ does not reappear in the final section. But B-flat is not the Queen’s personal key; it is used for the stern “threefold chords” and the Act 2 trio (No. 19) for Pamina, Tamino, and Sarastro. The keys of Sarastro’s principal utterances exploit the vocal resources (low notes, wide intervals) of Franz Xaver Gerl. His aria (No. 15) is in E, reaching c-sharp′, one degree above the dominant; his deepest note is F, the keynote of “O Isis und Osiris” (No. 10) and the fifth (dominant) in the trio. Mozart appreciated that Anna Gottlieb (once little Barbarina in Figaro) could now, as Pamina, ascend expressively to high B-flat and pitch wide intervals in her aria (No. 17). In each finale she sings important passages in F. In the first (from m. 395), kneeling, she explains her escape to Sarastro (whose kindly response brings his first low F).¹¹ In the second finale (from m. 277), embracing Tamino, she leaps to the high mediant, a′′. Such instrumental and vocal considerations were more likely to have been at the forefront of Mozart’s choice of keys than symbolism or larger structural questions.

Musical Styles

The variety of musical styles in The Magic Flute, and the separation of musical numbers by lengthy dialogues, gave rise to a study whose title queries whether it is more muddle than masterpiece.¹² The Magic Flute overture prepares us for grand ideas, and for storm and stress, but not for the sufferings of the characters; the Introduction (No. 1) combines terror and high comedy. Papageno’s entry introduces a new stylistic element, for “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja” (No. 2) is headed “Aria” but is essentially a popular song.

Seeing the dead serpent, Papageno flinches, but (in speech) he is soon lying glibly to Tamino. This first passage of spoken dialogue introduces elements – comedy, deceit, friendship – that recur throughout the opera, in speech and in musical numbers. The strophic song form used by Papageno (twice) reappears in arias for Monostatos and Sarastro; Mozart also found strophic forms useful in arias that are not popular in character. The central plot is launched when, in the first true aria (No. 3, “Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön”), Tamino contemplates Pamina’s portrait. Like most arias in The Magic Flute, it is in one tempo throughout. Although Mozart composed several important arias in two or more tempi (e.g., those for Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte), only two in The Magic Flute change speed: the Queen’s first, grandly operatic in style, and Papageno’s second, popular in style. This usage corresponds to Der Stein der Weisen (written for – and, indeed, partly by – some of the same singers).

Mozart’s aria forms, like their keys, were selected to suit the strengths of the singers. But, in turn, these choices may affect our understanding of character. In a strophic song or a single-tempo aria the dramatic situation remains essentially unchanged; rather than advancing the action, the music explores the singing personality. Correspondences with characters in other works by Mozart, not necessarily of the same voice type, also contribute to the context in which we listen today: Heartz revealingly juxtaposes passages from The Magic Flute and La clemenza di Tito.¹³ When Tamino rises in his first phrase to g′ (the mediant), and develops it with its upper neighbor, the resulting gentle tension suggests comparisons to Mozart’s song “Das Traumbild” and the Countess’s E-flat aria (“Porgi amor”) in Figaro.¹⁴

The arias in Act 2 richly develop the varied characters: Monostatos intent on rape (No. 13), the Queen chastising her daughter (No. 14), Sarastro comforting Pamina (No. 15), her despair at Tamino’s obdurate silence (No. 17, “Ach ich fühl’s”), and Papageno’s second strophic song (No. 20, the stanzas progressively elaborated by the “magic bells”). Each form suits characters whose feelings at this stage are concentrated on one thing only. This makes the two-tempo aria for the Queen in Act 1 (No. 4) a significant exception. We hear her approach before we see her; the libretto mentions a “hideous chord with music” (“erschütternde Akkord mit Musik”), for which Mozart provided no notation. Her arrival should be spectacular, and her appearance visibly alarms Tamino, for her first words, in recitative, are “Do not tremble” (“O zittre nicht”). McClelland identifies her entry music as tempesta, pointing to its “veiled” reappearance in the brilliant B-flat major Allegro that concludes the aria.¹⁵ The first, slow section of the aria is a plaint in G minor, the key Mozart favored for women in distress.¹⁶ The voice rises with almost overdone sincerity to a semitone above the keynote (a-flat′′), foreign to the G minor scale, and the harmonized cadential descent (mm. 59–60) employs all twelve pitches of the chromatic set.

At this point, the Queen appears sympathetic, and Tamino is easily persuaded to attempt Pamina’s rescue; but her music – including another unusual feature: aria sections in different keys – may allow us to question her sincerity. The difference from Pamina’s G minor aria is telling. The 6/8 meter of “Ach ich fühl’s” is more lilting than the Queen’s 3/4, but the phrasing is hesitant, the vocal line divided by rests. The Queen’s line is more sustained and controlled (indeed controlling, of Tamino). Pamina’s coloratura (many notes to a syllable) is slower, gentler, and not stratospheric like the Queen’s, and her wide intervals (one and a half octaves: m. 34) are agonized where those of Sarastro seem authoritative, secure. Wide vocal intervals for Fiordiligi are sometimes misinterpreted as satirical, but they were part of every prima donna’s technique.¹⁷

Chromatic saturation does not in itself imply insincerity. In the Queen’s aria, it provides information which, with hindsight, suggests that, if not actually lying, she is operating on Tamino for her own selfish ends. Pamina’s closing phrases use ten of the possible twelve notes (lacking only F and B), but her final cadences are straightforwardly diatonic. She is less complex than her mother, but the distribution of musical elements suggests the genuineness of her love and consequent misery. Pamina’s entry in the second finale adopts C minor and then intensifies tonally to G minor (from m. 80); all twelve pitches are in play at the cadence (mm. 92–93). Yet this cadence is deceptive; the music, like her suicide, is interrupted when the Genii intervene, and G minor is displaced by E-flat, which the Genii adopt for the Allegro. Thus the course of Pamina’s life, like Tamino’s in the first finale, is turned round by a harmonic deception.

Whereas in Mozart’s opera buffa finales, the linked sections consist mostly of ensembles that usually run their course to a cadence, those of The Magic Flute include various kinds of declamation, recitative-like or in tempo, and sections of music that are “open” in form, without a final cadence. This freedom enabled him to include the complex scene of Tamino’s realization that all may not be as it seemed prior to his arrival at the temples. Following solemn, if nonspecific, advice from the Genii, he is left alone to express his puzzlement in recitative. Rejected at two of the temple gates, he is confronted at the third by the “Elderly Priest” (also sometimes called “Sprecher” [Orator]¹⁸) whose entry, which changes Tamino’s life, is signaled by a change of harmonic direction when A-flat follows the descending C minor arpeggio (m. 85, Adagio). Recitative allows Mozart to distinguish orchestrally between Tamino’s impetuosity and the Priest’s grave, if cryptic, responses. When Tamino grows agitated, with tremolo (m. 109, “Sarastro herrschet hier”), the harmony implies resolution into F minor; as if in reproof, the Priest contradicts this expectation with a C minor chord (m. 110), rather than C major, the dominant of F. More sustained harmonies, as if to calm the young man, introduce the Priest’s last words, sung in tempo (m. 137), in A minor, to a distinct melodic shape – a minuscule arioso.

Still more perplexed about what is truth and what deceit, Tamino invokes the night (“O ew’ge Nacht!”), retaining the key of A minor, but with an unmistakable echo of the Queen’s first words (Example 5.1). Can this be coincidence? Perhaps it was intentional; by harmonizing with the voice (the Queen’s a′ and Tamino’s g-sharp: her “nicht” and his “Nacht”), the chords in the upper parts clash with the retained bass note.¹⁹ Other musical cross-references, making connections across the spoken dialogues, suggest that in this opera Mozart, or his unconscious, may have been working that way. The scene is concluded in A minor, when the Priest’s miniature arioso is twice repeated on cellos, accompanying the unseen male chorus.

Example 5.1 The Queen’s “O zittre nicht” (No. 4) and Tamino’s “O ew’ge Nacht” (No. 8).

Tamino has recourse to the magic flute, playing solo in a section unlike anything in Mozart’s other finales.²⁰ “Wie stark ist nicht dein Zauberton” is an open form; after a reprise and a darkening to C minor, the flute scale is answered by Papageno’s pipe and the song breaks off. Tamino’s excited response (m. 212, Presto) ascends to f′, then a′, on a pause (m. 216); there follows one measure only of Adagio, then Presto, this time with a cadence in C. He exits to a recitative-style punctuation figure, very much like that with which he had approached the temples. Unfortunately, Pamina and Papageno enter from the other direction, as if to remind us that The Magic Flute is, among other things, a comedy. The last part of the finale, framed by choruses in praise of Sarastro, proceeds swiftly and flexibly through confrontations and the noble couple’s moment of recognition. The key scheme is simple (C major and near relations G and F), without deceptive tonal shifts, for good and evil are now distinct; Sarastro’s speech to Pamina is all benevolence, he punishes Monostatos, and although he parts the lovers before their trials, trumpets and drums in C major proclaim his dignity and strength.

When Mozart went to Munich to work on Idomeneo in the presence of the singers, he engaged in an epistolary battle with the librettist (by way of his father) and exerted further control by composing the final ballet, which could have been left to a local composer. In Vienna Mozart lived near his poets, so there is no comparable record of their collaboration. But given his intimacy with Schikaneder and his troupe, it seems likely that he helped shape elements of the libretto and stage action and was happy with the freedom these offered to select appropriate musical forms without having to bend to the will of the highly paid singers at the court theater. Schikaneder, as impresario, no doubt took a controlling hand in ensuring the variety and brilliance of the spectacle, but it was surely Mozart who decided to set the various trials to strikingly original music that eschews the invitation to melodramatic excess.

Pamina, unlike Tamino and the reluctant Papageno, seems not to know that she is being subjected to trials, which she mostly has to face alone. The men receive specific advice after the solemn hymn (“O Isis und Osiris”), when two Priests interrogate them in dialogue, concluding with a very short duet (No. 11). The words are an invitation to critics of the opera seeking out misogyny. But Mozart does not present this stern advice to beware of the wiles of women in severe, minor key music, nor in the martial style already associated with Sarastro. Instead, the music is fast, light in tone and texture, in a comic vein, the flowing, galant melody incorporating a chromatic innuendo (on the words “er fehlte”). True, the orchestra includes trombones. But even the march-like conclusion (from m. 18) is sung sotto voce, with the orchestra piano and staccato. Mozart seems to imply that although the men must follow the Priests’ injunction, we – the audience – should not take it too seriously.

Tamino is given no music to correspond to the pain he must feel on hearing Pamina’s aria (“Ach ich fühl’s”), and his flute, even if it is heard during the dialogues (as sometimes happens, without notation from Mozart), is of no service here. The use of dialogue, rather than recitative, contributes directly to characterization when the Queen, who does not speak in the first act, confronts Pamina before her tempestuous “Der Hölle Rache” by talking – like an ordinary person. In this justly celebrated aria, requiring her to hit the top note four times (against once in Act 1), Mozart again shows his resourcefulness in handling tonal form, which requires a return to the original key, D minor, and also to the passagework heard in the subsidiary key, F major. So her rage now overflows in running triplets (from m. 69), before the passagework resumes, compensating for its lower pitch (reaching d′′′ rather than f′′′) by a sequential extension (from m. 77). The conclusion is an incisive recitative (“Hört der Mutter Schwur!”), with eleven pitches (missing only C) in the last few measures.

Another trial for Pamina is that she is reintroduced to Tamino (in dialogue), only to be told by Sarastro (speaking) that they are meeting for their “letzte Lebewohl” (final farewell). When the music starts (Trio, No. 19), Sarastro contradicts himself, singing that they will meet again (“Ihr werdet froh euch wiedersehn”). The lovers seem not to hear, even at the end where Sarastro’s deep notes reassure us: “We’ll meet again” (“Wir sehn uns wieder”). Pamina’s deafness to Sarastro’s words leads to further despair and her resolve to die if she must lose Tamino. The trio’s music is serene (Andante moderato in B-flat, with few woodwind instruments but no brass or percussion) and may represent the truth of the situation, but not the whole truth, for it leaves the lovers in uncertainty. In the interests of dramatic suspense, Mozart is careful not to express this too obviously.

The lovers’ reunion within the finale is in F major, the key of the solemn march that opened Act 2. Now Pamina takes control; after an outburst of joy, she becomes grave on recognizing the magic flute. As in the parallel scene with the Elderly Priest in the first finale, Mozart turns to near-recitative, moving fluidly (m. 317) to G minor, before returning to the local tonic, F, for a quartet in which Pamina soars above Tamino and the two Armored Men. After each trial the lovers’ voices join, their personalities merged as if in matrimony; their silence in the last scene at their moment of glorification marks their absorption into the community, and with it, perhaps, a loss of autonomy.

For the final trials Mozart hit on something extraordinary. Did Schikaneder ask him not to make the music too exciting, in case it distracted from the visual representation of the perils of fire and water? For in this scene the spectacle (as in the French “merveilleux”) should indeed be wonderful. Mozart makes no attempt to parallel what the stage machinery offers; fire and water are alike in the music. Not every late eighteenth-century composer would be so reticent; compare the collapse of the magic palace and gardens in Lully’s Armide (a simple, major key flourish) with the D- minor histrionics to which Gluck set the same libretto (1777). Mozart created a unique sound-world; it sufficed to provide the flute with its second solo, over basic harmony from a brass choir, the phrases softly punctuated by timpani. Taken out of context, this might appear dry, unresponsive, and not a little weird; within the opera it is utterly compelling.

Apotheosis of Papageno

When the chorus proclaims “Triumph!” the opera might have ended, except that the key is still C major, not E-flat, and Papageno’s story is incomplete. He seems to have failed the trials, but he is otherwise worthy and does no harm. He has glimpsed a youthful Papagena, cruelly snatched away. He becomes worthy of her through his willingness to die. The scene is in G major, like his first song, but the musical form is far from simple. He calls her name, with a fanfare shape resembling the choral “Triumph!” of the Act 1 finale, and pipes in vain to summon her. Then comes new melodic material that forms the basis of a sonata rondo of 130 measures, a thoroughly modern (though usually instrumental) form that cannot be called popular. Mozart takes full control by imposing a musical design on a shapeless text. The rondo theme involves stuttering calls and the smoother phrase first heard at measure 418. When this phrase returns at measure 444, the two-note anacrusis will not fit the words, so Mozart uses a three-note anacrusis instead; at measure 468 the original anacrusis is restored (Example 5.2).

Example 5.2 Papageno in the Act 2 finale, comparison of mm. 443–47 and 468–71.

The rondo episodes are Papageno’s only extended minor-mode music, though his tragicomic “O Weh!” ended the first-act quintet in G minor. The first episode uses the relative, E minor, with an agitated running figure inverting his piping motif (Example 5.3); chromatic runs further expand Papageno’s musical lexicon.

Example 5.3 Papageno in the Act 2 finale, motives from the same section, mm. 415–17 and 447–49.

In the second episode, as if in empathy with Pamina, Papageno adopts G minor, relating the episode material to the main keynote. His tonal domain is further enriched by cadences in its relative, B-flat (to m. 493). Papageno is an allegro character, but now he falters, with sensitive chromatic touches (G minor, with “Neapolitan” A-flat, m. 539), in a passage that could almost be inserted into her aria. Again, harmonic interruption signals a change of fortune; a G-minor cadence seems to have been prepared, but is displaced by a dominant seventh on G, pointing to C (m. 543). In a new tempo and meter, the Genii remind Papageno of the magic bells, which ring out again in C major before the scene is rounded tonally by returning to G for the duet with Papagena.

This is the climax of the comic element in The Magic Flute, but with all Papageno has gone through, it is an epiphany he thoroughly deserves, prepared by the relative complexity of his sonata rondo. With the ensembles in which he takes part, this scene confirms that Schikaneder was an accomplished musician as well as a versatile actor and ambitious impresario. This apotheosis of the bird couple is remote from the world of the temple, but the authors’ enlightenment conception seems to have been that simple folk, without ambition and represented mainly in a comic mode, should receive their due as real people who can also suffer. Papageno’s actions are a potent critique of the initiates who have brought him to this pass. Mozart’s music is pitched at a level that makes it possible to interpret it as simultaneously comical and essentially serious. We may laugh at Papageno’s counting one-two-three before accepting his destiny, but it is through tears – unless we withhold those for the sudden incursion of the Genii, whose music throughout is among the most beguiling of the whole opera.

The Genii and the Ending

The Genii (“Knaben”) embody the comical sublime that binds the disparate strands of the opera – not, mercifully, into a “unity” but into a more interesting kind of wholeness. They are purely musical; they are only heard in song. Their first entry (Act 1 finale) is heralded by an imposing slow march, using trombones for the first time since the overture, in marked contrast to their high voices. On their last appearance, they toss Papagena onto the stage in a scene of pure fun. These entries may be made on foot, but for one delicious ensemble (No. 16), they should appear in a flying machine (“Flugwerk”). Their words echo the Priests in commanding the initiates to silence, distinguishing Tamino from Papageno, but the music is the same for each; the dancing A major Allegretto in 6/8 has some of the lightest orchestration even for this opera, so that, as with the Priests’ duet, we are encouraged not to take the next trial too much in earnest. Sounding graver in the second finale, counseling Pamina (from m. 94), the Genii nevertheless sing in a delicately orchestrated galant style. Less individualized than the Queen’s Ladies (the first of whom has a few solo passages and who do speak), the Genii affect the action more and touch the extremes of the opera’s dramatic and musical range.

At the end, a scene heralded by a glorious sunrise, the Genii and the noble lovers are on stage, but silent. The Queen’s futile attempt at a coup is followed by a final transition from darkness to light and to the framing key, E-flat major. The brittle C-minor march of the Queen and her minions and the violence of their overthrow are slowed by whole-measure harmonies in tremolo (Example 5.4). The transition emerges onto F, which, with an added seventh, brings temporary closure in B-flat. The chain of suspensions (mm. 820–21) invites a slight relaxation of the tempo, not indicated by Mozart but an invitation to conductors that is sometimes accepted to good effect.

Example 5.4 Act 2 finale, the Queen and her entourage, mm. 812–22.

As the stage fills with light, orchestral gestures give Sarastro’s short recitative the incisive character of his entry in Act 1. His speech overlaps with a steadily unfolding cadence, in tempo (Andante), settling in E-flat. The chorus enters with more intertextual references. Within the Act 2 finale, the scene of the two Armored Men already recalled the overture by its imitative counterpoint (albeit with a different theme) and the first finale by its solemn introduction. The latter is more literally redeployed to start the final two-section chorus that proceeds from solemn thankfulness to festive joy (Example 5.5).

Example 5.5 Act 2 finale comparison: mm. 190–96 (Adagio of the Armored Men) and 829–34 (in the opera’s last scene).

The glorification of Pamina and Tamino is followed by an Allegro contredanse of the kind often used in symphonic finales, its pointed first theme (m. 847) contrasted with a lyrical phrase (m. 787), which may remind us that this work was intended to entertain as much as, if not more than, edify.

The Magic Flute, in sum, is not a muddle, but an inspired synthesis of stylistic elements. Joseph Kerman endorsed Edward J. Dent’s “appreciation of the impeccable dramatic structure,” in which “the music sums up the dramatic situation and illuminates it” in every number.²¹ In this respect, the music also justifies the dialogues which Dent’s edition curtailed, while resisting any temptation to subvert the work’s nature by substituting recitative.²² Antonio Salieri, no mean composer of opera, serious and comic, and Caterina Cavalieri, the first Konstanze in Die Entführung, rightly called The Magic Flute an “operone” (grand opera).²³ There is no need to apologize for its stylistic mixture which, on the contrary, is an essential part of its strength.

The arias in Mozart’s The Magic Flute are undoubtedly some of the most recognizable in the operatic repertoire. What factors influenced their creation? The same ones that shaped practically all opera arias in the eighteenth century: poetic structures, musical and dramatic conventions, as well as the abilities of the singers who originated the roles. Staging and other practical considerations also played a part. What, then, makes these arias so enduring and memorable? Mozart’s ability to create vivid music that portrays the character and dramatic situation might be one answer. How the arias explore and stretch customary operatic practices and musical language could be another. The composer seems to have taken great care to make each aria distinctive. The arias’ diversity of style, color, and affect is striking, especially when we hear and see them in the context of the drama. Moreover, most contain something unusual or extravagant – a musical element or moment that extends beyond the ordinary. As a result, the arias offer a compelling demonstration of one of the opera’s main themes: the power of music.

What Shapes an Aria?

All arias involve multiple components – what some analysts refer to as “domains.”¹ Poetic structures and literary devices within the text often shape the vocal line’s phrases as well as the aria’s musical meter and overall musical form. The composer can opt to adhere closely to the text’s poetic form (to set the text line by line, for example) or s/he can choose to repeat words, sentences, or entire stanzas. The vocal line can be primarily syllabic or melismatic (multiple notes present one syllable of text); it can be more declamatory in nature, lyrical and tuneful, or florid. As we shall see, how the orchestra interacts with the vocal line can vary a great deal. The instruments can double the voice, utter comments in between the vocal phrases, or be quite independent. The orchestral material itself may encompass interlocking rhythmic layers, and certain instruments may carry semantic associations. In addition, the dramatic situation and a character’s social status and gender can also influence an aria’s musical content.² Finally, the strengths and proclivities of the initial cast actively shaped the music. Eighteenth-century composers knew the singing and acting abilities of the performers who would premiere their works and composed with those in mind. The original singer’s range and technical prowess could influence an aria’s tonality, orchestration, and, most importantly, the scope and nature of the vocal line, including such things as the size and number of the leaps or runs it contained. As Mozart himself wrote in February 1778, “I love it when an aria is so accurately measured for a singer’s voice that it fits like a well-tailored suit of clothes.”³

In other words, even though arias combine music and text and use standard musical forms, many additional factors influence the end result, which in turn affects how and what the number reveals about the character who sings it. While many writers focus primarily on musical form when analyzing arias,⁴ The Magic Flute contains examples in which overarching form is perhaps the least important and telling aspect. Frequently, other elements contribute more to the aria’s expressivity and the dramaturgical role it plays. Our journey through The Magic Flute’s arias will begin with three examples that share the same form, to demonstrate how these other musical and dramatic components shape a number. It will then examine arias for each character, to show how Mozart responds to poetic content and structures, adapts conventions, “tailors” arias to the singers who created the roles, and infuses each number with delightful, extravagant touches.

Strophic Numbers for the Bird-Catcher, the Moor, and the Ruler

“Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja,” “Alles fühlt der Lieben Freuden,” and “In diesen heil’gen Hallen” share the same form. All are strophic; in each case, two stanzas of text are set to the same music. Because the poetic stanzas share the same meter and number of lines, the same music can be repeated for each verse of text. In all three arias, the rhyme scheme remains the same for both verses.

In addition to matching stanzas, the text for the first aria sung by the bird-catcher Papageno, “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja,” contains other poetic features that influence the musical form (see Table 6.1). Both eight-line strophes commence with exactly the same four lines. Each poetic line ends with an accented syllable. The text’s straightforward meter and simple rhyme scheme (rhyming couplets) prompt end-oriented phrases in the music: regular four-bar phrases that begin on upbeats and cadence on strong beats.

Much else in the aria remains within a narrow scope. The vocal line spans a ninth, but many of its gestures move within a fifth or even a third. The upper strings largely double the voice. The limited range and doubling of the voice line may be due to the abilities and reputation of the singer who premiered the role. The first Papageno, Emanuel Schikaneder, was the opera’s librettist and the star of the troupe. He was primarily an actor and impresario, not an opera singer, and had performed in a wide variety of roles; in Vienna, he had made a name for himself by playing comic, not too bright, peasant characters such as the gardener Anton (another role he wrote for himself).

Yet the aria’s harmonic vocabulary is also limited, inordinately so. Most chords are in root position; tonic-dominant-tonic progressions dominate; many dominant chords lack a seventh. Mi-re-do (3–2–1) figures permeate the melody. In other words, the music is about as diatonic as it could possibly be. The key – G major – is simple, too.

Together, the limited verbal, melodic, and harmonic content gives the impression that Papageno is the unsophisticated “Naturmensch” (natural man) he later claims to be. What you hear is what you get. The strophic form, straightforward syllabic melody, and nonsense syllables in the text also give the aria what some commentators call a Volkston or folk tone.⁵

Monostatos’s aria, “Alles fühlt der Liebe Freuden,” also uses strophic form, but the aria’s poetic and grammatical structures, irregular phrases, and musical conventions for portraying Otherness result in a very different-sounding aria. Like “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja,” the text consists of two eight-line stanzas that share the same meter and rhyme scheme, but in this case the rhyme scheme and metrical pattern are more complicated. Each poetic line begins with an accented syllable; thus, practically every vocal phrase starts on a strong beat. The ends of lines, however, alternate between accented and unaccented syllables. Some poetic lines, particularly in the second verse, contain incises or shorter phrases within the longer line, as in the stanza’s opening lines:

In the 1791 libretto, Monostatos is described in the dramatis personae as “ein Mohr” (a Moor). Pamina calls him “Der böse Mohr” (the wicked Moor) during the Act 1 finale (scene 18). Monostatos refers to himself as “Ein Schwarzer” (a black man) during his aria, as does Papageno in Act 1, scene 14.⁶ “Exotic,” lecherous men were a specialty of singer-actor Johann Nouseul, who premiered the role. The poetry and the character depicted prompted Mozart to employ many of the musical devices associated with “Turkish” music in the 1700s, including duple meter, a fast tempo, and phrases that begin on a strong beat with a longer note followed by sixteenths or eighths and are uneven in length.⁷ The aria opens with a lopsided nine-measure introduction (five measures plus four measures) rather than the customary four, eight, or two bars. Irregular phrase lengths continue throughout the aria. In fact, just as five-measure phrases seem to become the norm, two-measure or three-measure insertions interrupt the pattern (see mm. 25–34, for example).

The instrumentation also signifies Otherness. The piccolo (an unusual instrument for the time), flute, and first violin double one another, while the lower strings reiterate a single pitch for the first five bars. As Mary Hunter has argued, the alla turca style “represents Turkish music as a deficient or messy version of European music.”⁸ In this case, the sparse orchestration supports an equally sparse or “deficient” tune. The melody circles around a single pitch, the tonic. In fact, one could apply the epithet “too many notes” to this number – it has too many of the same notes, because so many pitches are reiterated. Even the aria’s home key, C major, can be considered a sign of Otherness, as that tonality was commonly used to portray these types of characters. In short, much about “Alles fühlt der Liebe Freuden” is irregular, despite the regular rhythms of the text and the repetitive strophic form. Arguably, Monostatos’s Otherness and the resultant musical irregularities have to be contained within a repetitive, predictable form.

Sarastro’s “In diesen heil’gen Hallen” is also strophic, but differences in multiple domains distinguish it from the opera’s other strophic numbers. The aria’s text consists of two six-line stanzas whose scansion is more complex than the above examples. Lines 1–4 alternate rhymes and unaccented line endings with accented ones. Two lines that conclude with accented syllables close each stanza, forming a rhyming couplet. The stanzas themselves are linked by anaphora – beginning with the same word or phrase – in this case the words “In diesen heil’gen.” This poetic device implies strophic form.

While the overall musical form of the aria is strophic, the strophe itself is through-composed. The vocal line does not conclude any of its phrases on the tonic until the strophe’s final bars; instead, Mozart has the vocal phrases end on scale degrees 3 or 5. Both of these musical choices create a sense of forward momentum and continuity of thought. The shape of the vocal line does as well. In accordance with the prosody of the text and in contrast with Monostatos’s aria, Sarastro’s vocal lines all commence on an upbeat; most conclude on a downbeat on a more stable harmony. While the vocal line in all three strophic arias is largely syllabic, Sarastro’s vocal line is more conjunct and thus sounds more lyrical. Appoggiaturas abound.

The relationship between the accompaniment and the vocal line also differs. Even a cursory glance at the score reveals more counterpoint between the voice and the orchestra than in the other strophic numbers, perhaps due to the skill of the original performer. The first Sarastro, Franz Xaver Gerl, was an accomplished musician, a composer and performer, who had studied under Mozart’s father, Leopold, as a choirboy in Salzburg.

What does the use of strophic form for “In diesen heil’gen Hallen” imply? Perhaps that the character Sarastro and the values he espouses (friendship, forgiveness, love) are constant and unchanging. Together, the vocal line’s low range, the stately tempo, and the aria’s straightforward form depict Sarastro as a calm, reasonable person, particularly since the number contrasts starkly with the aria that immediately precedes it, the Queen’s “Der Hölle Rache.”

The Queen’s Arias: Displays of Power and Rage

The Queen of the Night’s numbers, “Der Hölle Rache” and “O zittre nicht … Zum Leiden,” exemplify how Mozart “tailors” numbers to a particular singer and adapts a variety of musical traditions to create two of the most celebrated arias ever written. The soprano who originated the role, Josepha Hofer, Mozart’s sister-in-law, certainly had special capabilities. Judging from these arias and other music written for her, she must have had an agile voice and an impressive high register.⁹ Both of the Queen’s arias require the singer to ascend to an f′′′, the highest note on the Viennese piano at the time. Additionally, the character’s status, musical conventions, and perhaps Mozart’s desire to show off his compositional prowess converge in the Queen’s music.

To take the second aria first, “Der Hölle Rache” is undeniably music fit for a Queen. The marchlike rhythms, full orchestration (strings, double winds, timpani, and trumpets), and extended coloratura passages that require exceptional vocal virtuosity signal that the character is a powerful person of high rank. Here, Mozart adapts a conventional aria type from opera seria. “Der Hölle Rache” has many of the hallmarks of a “rage aria.” Its minor key, large leaps in the vocal line, bustling accompaniment, use of tremolo and sforzandi, and chromatic ascents and descents customarily conveyed great anger during the eighteenth century. But Mozart draws on a local Viennese tradition as well: that of spectacular arias for powerful supernatural characters. Other magical Singspiele written for the company that premiered The Magic Flute contain flashy, vocally demanding arias.¹⁰ Paul Wranitzky’s Oberon (1789), which also starred Hofer in a similar role, for example, includes numbers with elaborate coloratura that require the soprano to ascend to a d′′′. Did competitiveness prompt Mozart to write an even higher and flashier aria?

The Queen’s first aria, “O zittre nicht … Zum Leiden,” also presents extreme vocal demands and synthesizes several operatic traditions. Practical considerations shape the scene as well. Written for a theater that was celebrated for its spectacular staging, extravagant music complements extraordinary stage effects.¹¹ A lengthy and majestic orchestral prelude ushers the Queen onstage. Rising arpeggios over a B-flat pedal gradually increase the volume and tonal expanse. The orchestral introduction clearly portrays the Queen as a grand personage (mm. 1–10). It also allows time for the scenic transformation described in the original libretto to unfold:

Mozart draws on several other noble idioms to portray this character. An orchestrally accompanied recitative precedes the aria (mm. 11–20). Accompagnato in this repertoire, like coloratura and the grand prelude, also signified noble or supernatural characters. Motives from the orchestral introduction continue to frame the Queen’s utterances as she reassures Tamino.

“O zittre nicht … Zum Leiden” is perhaps an instance where the text’s structure suggests one musical form and Mozart opted to employ another. The metered poetry of the aria commences with three quatrains, the second of which has shorter lines and a different rhyme scheme. A fourth stanza is marked Allegro. This combination of poetic structures suggests a two-tempo rondò (ABAC in form, with C being in a faster tempo), an aria type associated with upper-class heroines. While Mozart alludes to this conventional aria type, he fashions a number that is looser in form. The Andante section in particular (mm. 21–64) has an arioso-like character and is more formally ambiguous.

The aria proper commences at measure 21 with a triple-meter section in G minor in the middle range of the voice. Mozart carefully crafts the opening paragraph to highlight the character’s plight and the reason for it. Lightly orchestrated three-measure phrases underscore the Queen’s sorrowful opening lines. In keeping with the accents of the poetry, most of the vocal phrases begin and end on weak beats, until the Queen’s revelation that “an evil creature” took her daughter. Here, dotted rhythms and militaristic flourishes in the orchestra lead to the aria’s first strong cadence (both the voice and bass land on the tonic) and a change of key to B-flat major (mm. 32–35).

Word painting permeates the next segment, as the Queen describes how her daughter was taken from her. Fluttering sixteenth notes in the violins depict Pamina’s “trembling,” “fearful tremors,” and “timid struggles” (mm. 38–44). A chromatic countermelody in the bassoons and violas, which perhaps can be heard as representing Pamina, accompanies the Queen’s narrative (mm. 36–44).

The aria’s third verse returns to the soft dynamics, delicate scoring, and the key of G minor as the Queen describes Pamina’s cries for help and her own inability to rescue her (mm. 45–61).¹² A lengthy series of minor and diminished harmonies, a deceptive cadence (m. 56), and a prolonged descent in the vocal line conclude her tale and lead into the Allegro moderato that follows.

Once the Queen completes her story, her speech shifts from past to future tense. She issues commands and promises rewards (“You will go to free her”). Mozart reflects the change to the imperative by composing it into the music. The meter, tonality, and tempo all shift – from triple to duple meter, G minor to B-flat major, Andante to Allegro moderato. Mozart also employs contrasting melodic contours. Decisive scalar figures and arpeggios in the vocal line replace the sighing figures and descending phrases that dominated the previous section. Most phrases now commence and conclude on strong beats. In fact, the composer sometimes ignores the prosody in order to do so.

The vocal line soars into the stratosphere (B-flat′′ to f′′′) as we approach the aria’s conclusion. Extensive roulades (m. 79ff.) and the medium tessitura of the accompaniment highlight the power of the singer’s (and the character’s) voice. While Mozart has been criticized for setting the word “dann” (then) on a melisma lasting thirteen measures, such complaints ignore how the word contains a felicitous vowel for singing in the upper register.¹³ The composer’s choice also stresses the conditional nature of the Queen’s promise. Melodically, the line becomes the equivalent of saying, “And if I see you as the victor, then she shall be forever yours.” The vocal line’s extensive sixteenth- and eighth-note runs broaden to half-notes to drive home the aria’s final words “auf ewig dein” (forever yours). A harmonically decisive postlude that recalls the opening of the Allegro closes the entire scene.

The grand entrance music, the accompagnato, and the vocal pyrotechnics give the impression of a forceful being. The scene as a whole displays the breadth of the Queen’s rhetorical arsenal as she uses three, very different musical styles to persuade Tamino to rescue her daughter. During the accompagnato she reassures and flatters; in the triple-meter Andante section she laments, narrates, and seeks empathy; during the melismatic Allegro she dispenses orders and makes promises. After such a compelling musical and rhetorical display, it is no wonder that Tamino believes she is telling the truth and undertakes his quest.

A Man of Feeling: “Dies Bildnis”

While the Queen’s arias draw on traditional methods of depicting nobility, Tamino’s aria “Dies Bildnis” draws on another prominent eighteenth-century dramatic convention: the portrayal of sensibility. The text’s content and its punctuation indicate passionate emotions. Tamino’s monologue contains repeated words, exclamation points, and dashes, particularly during its second half. The use of first person in eighteenth-century sentimental novels is often interrupted by similar pauses, exclamations, and heavily emphasized or repeated words, as in this excerpt from the quintessential sentimental novel, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela:

And this selection from J. W. von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther:

As James Webster points out, “Dies Bildnis” as a whole depicts how Tamino’s feelings “progress … from [the character’s] initial undifferentiated reaction to the portrait, through the realization that he has fallen in love, and the confusion engendered by awakened but unfulfilled passion, to conviction.”¹⁶ Mozart’s music enhances the arc of Tamino’s emotional journey in a number of ways. The composer matches Tamino’s fragmented ruminations with irregular phrases, harmonic interruptions, rests, and pauses. For example, an unexpected harmony (an augmented sixth chord) on the downbeat of measure 12 underscores the “new emotion” Tamino feels. The musical setting increases the text repetition even more. To give but one instance, the prince asks himself, “Could this sensation be love?” twice (mm. 22–25), before responding, “It is love alone. Love, love, love alone” (mm. 27–34).

Harmonic arrivals and departures promote the sensation of emotional transformation. This surface variety is grounded in a clear tonal structure. A paragraph in the tonic (mm. 1–15) is followed by one in the dominant key (mm. 16–34). The aria’s third paragraph prolongs the harmonic tension through extended dominant pedals (mm. 35–43) that lead to a grand pause. A full bar of silence precedes the tonic’s unequivocal return at a crucial dramatic moment (discussed below).

The aria’s melodic variety, complex orchestration, and through-composed form suggest that Tamino is a refined, more complicated person. Not surprisingly, the number was written for a sophisticated, multitalented musician, Benedikt Schack, who was praised by Mozart’s father for his elegant singing.¹⁷ In contrast to the arias written for Schikaneder, the orchestra here rarely doubles the voice; when it does, it presents embellished versions of the vocal line. At times, the orchestra paints the text; sixteenth- and thirty-second-note figures during the third paragraph, for example, portray Tamino’s growing ardor and pounding heart. Simon P. Keefe suggests that the clarinets, bassoons, and horns included in the ensemble underscore (literally and figuratively) the character’s aristocratic status and were chosen to enhance Schack’s beautiful tenor voice.¹⁸

In addition to being an illustration of growing sentiment, “Dies Bildnis” can also be understood as a shift from ignorance to awareness – what Aristotelian poetics calls a scene of recognition. Musically, the aria meets Jessica Waldoff’s criteria for recognition scenes. Her study of these pivotal dramatic moments shows that musical shifts prompt shifts in action or thought, which are then followed by an explanatory narrative. Musical recollections (references to prior material) also frequently occur.¹⁹ “Dies Bildnis” encompasses all of these, albeit in miniature. A musical shift precedes Tamino’s realization that he is in love. Winds and horns sans strings lead into his ecstatic “Ja, ja” (Yes! Yes! mm. 24–26). The modulation to the dominant is confirmed decisively in both the vocal and orchestral material shortly thereafter (m. 34). That in turn ushers in an extended dominant pedal as Tamino expounds upon his desires. The character then begins to fashion his own explanatory, self-predictive narrative, a narrative he later seeks to fulfill: “What would I do? I would press her to this scorching bosom, and then for eternity would she be mine.” An entire measure of silence – comparable to the dashes in sentimental fiction – precedes his final declaration. The aria concludes with the richest accompaniment pattern yet (three interlocking gestures) and a musical recollection. The aria’s closing figures repeat, decorate, and extend material that originally accompanied the words “my heart with new emotion fills” (compare mm. 10–15 to mm. 52–61).

Tamino repeats his final declaration five times. Regardless of whether we view this monologue as a sentimental statement or a scene of recognition, “Dies Bildnis” is an extremely end-oriented aria tonally, formally, and dramatically. More importantly, the sense of emotional discovery it conveys arises more from the music Mozart creates than the aria’s text.

The Princess Laments: “Ach ich fühl’s”

While Tamino’s aria depicts blossoming love, Pamina’s sole aria laments its loss. Arguably, this number is the most poignant and the most complex aria of the opera. The character sings “Ach ich fühl’s” in response to Tamino’s refusal to speak to her, mistakenly believing that he has rejected her.

The aria’s home key and instrumentation set this number apart and lend it a “special intensity.”²⁰ As Christoph Wolff notes, “Ach ich fühl’s” is the only aria in the opera with three soli winds (flute, oboe, bassoon).²¹ The home key of G minor is one Mozart used sparingly in his later operas. The other instances also involve distraught heroines (Ilia in Idomeneo and Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, for example) and, as we have just discussed, the account Pamina’s mother gives of her daughter’s abduction (“Zum Leiden”).²²

“Ach ich fühl’s” is replete with harmonic and rhythmic tension. The predictable and the unexpected rub against one another in almost every measure. The aria is notated in 6/8. An unrelenting, repeating rhythm in the strings (a march? a heartbeat?) underpins practically every bar. Yet, as William Braun points out, the characteristic 6/8 rhythm of “long-short-long … is nowhere to be found. In fact, it is about the only possible rhythm in 6/8 that Mozart does not use in the aria, and Pamina, almost unbelievably, sings a new rhythm in just about every bar.”²³ Even though each line of the aria’s text begins with an accented syllable, the vocal line never begins its phrases on the downbeat. Again, Mozart works against, ignores even, the scansion of the text.

What does occur on numerous downbeats is dissonance. Tritones and diminished sevenths abound within the vocal line and between it and the bass. Chromatic motion saturates the voice leading as well.

The vocal line begins with three descents in bars 1–4 (from 5 down to 1, from 1 down to 5, and then 6 down to sharp-7), setting up a pattern that permeates the aria. Extended descents and incomplete ascents pull against one another throughout the number. In measures 16–19, for example, the flute and oboe attempt, but cannot even manage, to scale the octave. Instead, they rise through the seventh and fall; their leap downward creates a tritone with their counterpart, the bassoon, whose half-step sighs belatedly resolve the dissonances two beats too late (mm. 17–18 and 19–20).

As Thomas Bauman writes, Mozart uses “silence … as expressively as the notes themselves” throughout Pamina’s lament, but particularly near the end.²⁴ The aria’s final measures contain small, but telling, details. The persistent rhythm subsides (mm. 36–37). The strings sound an eighth note while the voice sustains a quarter (m. 38). Pamina, it seems, is truly on her own, unsupported musically and dramatically. The voice utters its final phrase largely unaccompanied. It hovers on a flat-6 (E-flat, an implied ninth over the dominant) before tumbling down to the tonic again (mm. 37–38). A moment of silence precedes the postlude, whose melodic contours echo Pamina’s earlier pleas but whose rhythms do not.²⁵ Syncopated descents laced with pungent dissonances cascade into the strings’ lower ranges. The aria’s final sonority barely whispers a third above the tonic G.

How are we to interpret the aria’s postlude? Bauman points out that all previous postludes in the opera have a close rhythmic connection to important phrases in the numbers they close. This one does not.²⁶ Some authors have suggested that the postlude, and other passages that feature the flute in the opera, might represent the mute Tamino’s inner thoughts. Braun and Webster, on the other hand, believe it depicts a devastated Pamina, her pleas unanswered, staggering away.²⁷ Another possibility exists. The postlude pairs instruments that have not partnered one another earlier in the aria – the bassoon and flute, oboe and second violin, viola and cello – which implies that the passage portrays the anguish both characters feel.

Papageno Improvises: “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen”

The Magic Flute’s final aria, “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen,” juxtaposes simplicity with opulence, as poetic structures, standard musical forms, and the skills of the original creators intertwine. Sung by Papageno, the number again inhabits the realm of the Volkston. Formwise, however, “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” is more complex than “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja,” the character’s first aria. The number features two soloists, not one – the baritone and the magic bells – whose interplay captures both Mozart’s and the original Papageno’s gifts for improvisation.

“Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” alternates between two contrasting sections: a refrain in 2/4 (labeled in Table 6.2 below as A) and verses in 6/8 (labeled B). The poetry, with its built-in refrain, clearly prompts the form: different line lengths and accentuations in the poetry inspire the meter changes. The iambs of the refrain fit neatly into 2/4; the verses, on the other hand, incorporate dactyls (an accented syllable followed by two unaccented ones), a pattern that suggests 6/8. The verses also incorporate two different types of line endings. The first couplet ends with an unaccented syllable, the second couplet with an accented one.

It is perhaps a bit unusual that the aria begins with a refrain. From the outset we hear an unexpected and distinctive tone color. Papageno’s magic bells introduce the simple but catchy tune and then alternate with the voice during both the A and B sections. Like the character’s first aria, the simple but memorable diatonic melody moves within a limited range. Root-position chords and tonic–dominant–tonic progressions dominate the harmony. As the aria progresses, however, the music for the bells becomes more and more florid. During the third repetition of the refrain, for instance, the bells play triplet sixteenths and thirty-second notes while the winds take over the tune; the bell part features continuous sixteenths during the aria’s third and final verse (see Table 6.3).

Therefore, the aria melds strophic form with techniques commonly found in keyboard variations on popular tunes, one of Mozart’s specialties. On one level, “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” can be analyzed as a strophic song with a refrain. On another, it can be viewed as a double or alternating variation, with variants that may have grown out of improvisations. Like Mozart, Schikaneder, the original Papageno, was known for his ability for extemporization, including adding strophes to popular arias.²⁸ A letter by Mozart from October 1791 indicates how one performance involved a bit more improvisation than Schikaneder anticipated:

The aria’s significantly more complex form and the increasingly complicated accompaniment patterns suggest that the character Papageno has grown as a person. His simple rhetoric has been enriched.

Conclusion

The Magic Flute reveals Mozart’s ability to tailor arias not only to singers, but also to the character portrayed and the dramatic situation. As stated earlier, the composer seems to have taken great care to make each of the opera’s arias distinctive. All of the arias contain something unusual and/or extravagant. From the extreme high notes of the Queen’s numbers, to the increasingly florid flourishes of the bells in “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen,” to the panoply of rhythms in “Ach ich fühl’s,” and the full measure of silence in “Dies Bildnis,” each aria stretches the limits of eighteenth-century music in some fashion. As a result, Mozart’s skill and creativity as a composer was and is on display, particularly his ability to compose in diverse styles and create nuanced timbres. Ironically, these arias, so deftly tailored to particular singers’ strengths and to specific dramatic situations, have become some of the most well-known pieces of European art music. Therefore, the arias manifest the power of music on multiple levels, including its ability to endure and speak beyond its original context.

To be invited, as a music analyst, to explore the ensembles and choruses in The Magic Flute is at once both enticing and daunting. The enticement needs little explanation: Who would not rejoice at the chance to spend scholarly time with this work, the music of which is unquestionably as bezaubernd schön as the image of Pamina that launches Tamino’s quest? As for what is daunting – aside from the very challenge to do verbal justice somehow to that Schönheit – part of the answer lies in the fact that the traditional concentration on ensembles, including finales (if not choruses), in analytical accounts of Mozart’s operas has been subjected to harsh criticism, and in high places. Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, addressing (again) the opening duet from Le nozze di Figaro, argued more than thirty years ago that “the traditional concentration on ensembles in the Mozart literature may lie simply in professional habits. Writers on musical topics – analysts in particular – tend to turn to a small repertoire of much-analysed pieces whenever they wish to advance a new theory or to demonstrate a new prowess.” And they note that Figaro in particular “has its share of these poor, battered and dismembered exemplars, brutally denied an opportunity to speak out against those who have assailed them.”¹ One can at least reply that the ensembles in The Magic Flute have suffered less battering than those in Figaro, and in the Da Ponte operas more generally.

Abbate and Parker go on to suggest, more seriously, that the concentration on ensembles may be laid at the door of late nineteenth-century Mozart reception, and Wagnerism in particular, with its emphasis on unity of music and dramatic action, on the one hand, and purely musical unity, particularly in the shape of large-scale “symphonic” formal structures, on the other. And although eschewing a “call to arms,” they invite consideration of the possibility that “coherence, symmetry or ‘symphonic’ sense” and “absolute correspondence between the unfolding of music, text and stage-action” may not be the only aesthetic criteria against which the Mozartian operatic ensemble may be fruitfully measured.² They trace the concern with large-scale formal processes, and thus ensembles and finales, back to the work of Alfred Lorenz in the 1920s, as also has James Webster, who notes that what Lorenz initiated was perpetuated in the work of writers such as Joseph Kerman and Charles Rosen.

This brings Webster to the importance given over by Kerman and Rosen to the role of sonata form, “both as a primary constituent of Mozart’s operas and as a criterion of value.”³ Indeed, writing of the chief characteristics of the sonata style in his hugely influential The Classical Style, Rosen could state that “there is no question, however, that Mozart was the first composer to comprehend, in any systematic way, their implications for opera,”⁴ before going on to develop an extended sonata-form analysis of the Act 3 sextet from Figaro that itself quickly became paradigmatic for later commentators. Yet, as Webster noted, only one of the sixteen nonduet ensembles in the Da Ponte operas “is unambiguously in sonata form!”⁵ And already by 1996 Tim Carter could report that sonata-form analyses of Mozart ensembles were “coming under threat,” while going on to remark that “the need for an adequate typology of Mozart’s ensemble sonata (and other) forms has not yet been met by the literature.”⁶ More importantly, perhaps, in comparing Figaro to Così fan tutte, he suggested that Mozart may have become increasingly eager “to explore realistic alternatives to sonata-form organization,” in particular adopting the “looser, more progressive structures” typical of finales to mid-act ensemble movements.⁷

The twenty-first-century ensemble analyst, then, can no longer take easy refuge in cozy formal strategies of earlier critics, which were already creaking at the end of the twentieth.⁸ And even if one were to argue that the ensembles in The Magic Flute, a Singspiel, may not best be approached from the formal paradigm of Italian opera buffa, there remains the fact that the dramatis personae of The Magic Flute include unique groupings that materially affect the musical and dramatic conception of several ensembles. Most telling in this respect are the Three Ladies and the Three Boys, who function not as individuals but rather as what might be termed “ensemble characters.” This point was noted as far back as 1956 by Gerald Abraham, in the context of a discussion of Mozart’s preference for the operatic ensemble as a vehicle for the development of dramatic character. Given this purpose, it is not surprising that the composer tended to favor duets and trios, “the combinations which offer him one character to strike against another or two others. When more characters are introduced, problems begin to arise.”⁹ While in Figaro and Don Giovanni, and excluding finales, the trio texture is exceeded only by one quartet and two sextets, The Magic Flute boasts a quintet in each act, both set for the same characters (namely, Tamino, Papageno, and the Three Ladies). But since the Ladies “amount to only one character, their quintets … are, from the dramatic point of view, essentially trios.”¹⁰

The lack of individuality of these two sets of characters is emphasized by the layout of some editions of the score (the Eulenburg version, edited from the autograph by Hermann Abert, being a case in point), in which the first two Ladies and two Boys are scored on one stave while the third (often functioning as what Abraham terms a “pseudo-bass”¹¹) is scored separately. This does not reflect Mozart’s practice in the autograph, in which he routinely provided a separate stave for each part.¹² But even in cases such as the Introduction (No. 1), measures 106–19, when the Ladies sing in contrapuntal dialogue with one another, their music, thoughts, and motivation are essentially all one. As for the multisection Introduction as a whole, it might logically be termed a quartet, in that the participating characters are the Three Ladies and Tamino. Even so, the entrance of the Ladies (m. 40) marks the end of Tamino’s vocal contribution: he sings as a soloist and then remains unconscious for the rest of the number, so the four characters never sing together. This is an ensemble – and Introduction – in a quite different sense to that of the action- and character-filled “Introduzione” that opens Don Giovanni.

Tamino’s presence in the Act 1 quintet is similarly compromised. It is notable that following his opening duet with Papageno, lamenting his inability to free Papageno’s padlocked mouth, he is largely silent, except for those passages in which all five parts combine in “moralizing” statements (mm. 54–77, 111–32, 184–203).¹³ Only after the last of these does Tamino make any contribution to plot development, in asking where he and Papageno are to find Sarastro’s castle; remarkably, the Ladies’ earlier gift of the magic flute (mm. 80–87) – a sine qua non of the entire action – brings forth no individual response from him. A good deal of this “quintet” actually operates as a vocal quartet for the Three Ladies and Papageno; or rather, by Abraham’s logic, it functions as a duet. Similarly, the three constituent characters of the succeeding trio (No. 6) never sing as a trio: rather, the number is constituted of two duets, each tonally closed in G, one for Monostatos and Pamina, the other for Monostatos and Papageno. Even the duets (Act 1, No. 7; Act 2, No. 11) are not occasions for “one character to strike against another”; the Two Priests in “Bewahret euch vor Weibertücken” sing as one, like the Ladies and Boys, while Pamina and Papageno, highly differentiated characters in so many respects though they be, inhabit the same musical and emotional world in “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen.” This characteristic merging of characters perhaps reaches its apogee in the celebrated “duet” for the Men in Armor in the Act 2 finale (mm. 206–37), where both sing in unison at the octave, their music not even Mozart’s but rather the chorale melody “Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh’ darein.” Indeed, given that the chorale melody was substituted for an alternative melodic line initially sketched by Mozart, one can perhaps speak here not so much of the merging of characters but rather of the anonymization or even suppression of “character” itself.¹⁴

The Act 1 and 2 Quintets

The temptation to invoke classical instrumental forms in relation to the ensembles is well illustrated by Erik Smith’s suggestion that the Act 1 quintet “could be described harmonically as a sonata rondo with coda, but not in the normal sense of a recurring melody, for Mozart constantly finds new words and new situations requiring new music.”¹⁵ Inasmuch as one cannot deny the overarching I–V–I–vi/modulatory–I tonal scheme, the formal comparison is at least intelligible; but to try to think of this music in terms of sonata rondo does little for one’s experience of its unfolding. In particular, there is lacking the more dynamic transition between sections, and especially between dominant and tonic, that is so characteristic of the sonata style. Smith himself notes the “perfunctory” nature of the shift to V (mm. 33–35) for the beginning of his second section; and one might say the same of the return to I for the beginning of the third, measures 77–81 – essentially the same formula that links the penultimate and final sections of the Introduction, measures 151–53. Mozart’s musical design is clearly indebted to the structure of the libretto: the move to V at measures 34–35 corresponds to the scene shift introducing the Three Ladies, for example; and the “moralizing” statements directed to be sung by “Alle Fünf” in Schikaneder’s libretto evidently dictated the location of the close to Smith’s second and third sections.

Smith’s suggestion that measures 133–71 form a section “in G minor” in which “Papageno is ordered to accompany Tamino” is also open to question, in that it fails to acknowledge the strong turn toward D minor (iii) that sets in as the Ladies tell Papageno what the Queen of the Night requires of him, including the emphatic V pedals with neighboring augmented-sixth harmonies in measures 150–57. Only after the passage has come to a full cadence in D minor with the Ladies’ closing instruction at measure 163 is there a return to the realm of G minor, where Papageno is speaking “für sich” rather than engaging with those around him.¹⁶ If one were to defend Smith’s G-minor reading, however, one could point to the detail that as he begins this private speech, Papageno reiterates the VI♯6–V/g progression that concluded his attempted leave-taking of the Ladies at measures 138–39. In this sense, then, the D-minor passage, for all its musical and dramatic prominence, might be considered musically subordinate, or parenthetical, to a more overarching tonal continuity. There will be occasion to return to the notion of parenthesis below.

Schikaneder’s “Alle Fünf” directions in the libretto are absorbed into the close of the second and third sections of Smith’s sonata rondo scheme, as already remarked. But the third such direction (“Silberglöckchen, Zauberflöten”) is treated by Smith as the beginning of his sixth section, which would implicitly function as the “recapitulation” in his sonata rondo scheme. Prior to this, he identifies measures 172–83 as a conspicuously “short E flat section in which Papageno is presented with the glockenspiel.” (Only the beginning is “in” E-flat; by its conclusion, this section has returned to V/I.) It is not difficult to recognize that this event parallels the presentation, earlier and in the tonic B-flat, of the magic flute to Tamino. If we allow our analysis to be guided as much by the construction of the libretto and the events on stage as by abstract, tonic-driven tonal and formal schemes, it makes sense to read the arrival at B-flat in measure 184 as an ending rather than a beginning. And an ending it clearly is, as the words of farewell and the stage direction “Alle wollen gehen” make clear.

This returns us to the idea of parenthesis, which may serve to critique the weakest aspect of Smith’s analysis – namely, that “the Andante in B flat forms the coda.” (It is not even dignified with its measure numbering, 214–47, in Smith’s table.) The coda designation is reasonable, in that all five characters had been preparing to leave the stage following their farewells and the strong tonic closure in measures 196–203. On the other hand, the dominant preparation for the Andante (measures 207–13), the last of the four sections in this quintet to open in the tonic, is far more emphatic – and more characteristic of sonata style – than any heard previously, including particularly that (measures 180–83) which sets up the preceding section, presumed to be a conclusion. This, at last, feels like a “willed” arrival of the tonic key rather than a chance re-encounter with it. Registrally, however, and in terms of its (gorgeous) scoring, it does not follow seamlessly from that preparation; only gradually, once Tamino and Papageno begin to repeat what the Ladies have told them about the Three Boys, is the lower register and eventually full scoring retrieved.

To the extent that a coda can be regarded as a tonal and formal afterthought, an appendix to the main action, the label here is singularly inappropriate on both counts. This is a distinct moment, at which musical and dramatic considerations clearly align in some senses but not in others. Tonally speaking, one can argue that this is the goal of the entire design; dramatically, it marks the introduction of the Boys, a new “ensemble character,” but without their being physically present. In his music for the Three Ladies here, Mozart brilliantly evokes the ensemble singing style of these extraterrestrial beings and the role they will later play. Schikaneder directed that Tamino and Papageno repeat only the first two (“Drei Knäbchen … Reise”) of the Ladies’ four lines and that following these all five characters repeat the lines of farewell that had seemed to be bringing the quintet to its end at measure 192. Mozart follows suit: the Ladies repeat the second half of their verse after Tamino and Papageno have sung their lines, following which – counterintuitively, perhaps – the latter begin the words of farewell, but borrow the Ladies’ music referring to the Three Boys, the end of which is then taken up by all, closing at measure 241. The remaining six measures may properly be described as a coda, but they might just as easily have performed the same function in relation to the first farewell close, back at measure 203. It is in this sense that the main body of the Andante may be regarded as parenthetical to a larger continuity. Accordingly, the tonic arrival at its beginning is at once a significant tonal goal, in an immediate sense, and yet an interpolation in a larger scheme. This quintet ends, after all, with an interpolated vision of characters yet to be seen. That is why we might think of the B-flat tonic as in some sense “there” and yet not quite being there at all (see Example 7.1).

Example 7.1 Act 1 quintet (No. 5), formal overview.

If this last claim seems far-fetched to some, as an attempt to suggest that for dramatic and musical reasons the tonal closure of the Act 1 quintet may not be as definite as it appears on the pages of the score, the relative openness of the ending of the Act 2 quintet, which cannot be dealt with at such length here, is much less debatable, closing as it does in the minor mode of its G tonic, a dramatic and sudden shift brought about by the surprise imprecations of the unseen Priests.¹⁷ In fact, the Priests’ entry here (“Entweiht ist die heilige Schwelle”) at first seems to wrench the tonality not toward G minor but rather C minor, itself the parallel minor of their C-major duet (No. 11), which is separated from the quintet by only the briefest passage of spoken dialogue. There is thus a close musical and dramatic continuity between these two numbers: the Priests quit the stage after No. 11, but they may be understood as (initially) silent participants in the quintet; overhearers of the Ladies’ claims of their falsehood and of the unavoidable descent into hell of those who join their brotherhood, the Priests eventually intervene to cast down the Ladies themselves.¹⁸ The universalized moralizing warning against “Weibertücken” in No. 11 finds its specific target here at the end of the quintet. And the closing shift to G minor is cleverly prefigured in Papageno’s unexpected D–E-flat ascent at “unerhört!” in measures 71–72; indeed, the Priests (note also the similar forte unison accompaniments) pick up the very same pitch, though approached now from g a minor sixth below, at their entry in measures 151–52, and Papageno will repeat his original semitonal ascent at the first of his three “O weh!” cries (measures 160–61) before he falls to the ground.¹⁹

Eschewing a detailed comparison, Smith claims that this number “shows a similar construction” to that of the Act 1 quintet, while noting that it differs in setting “a single situation throughout.”²⁰ There are indeed superficial similarities: the opening tonic section is followed by one in the dominant and then a return to the tonic, even (as is not the case in Act 1) with a reprise of the “recurring instrumental phrase” [flute, violin I]) associated by Smith with “the sweet blandishments of the Ladies” and latterly Tamino’s “rather platitudinous refusals” – though the reprise, if not “purely” musical, might as well have been prompted by the similar words of the Ladies, “Tamino, dir ist Tod geschworen!” (mm. 11–13) and “Tamino, hör! Du bist verloren!” (mm. 47–49), which also draw from Mozart a repeat of their earlier music. Compared to the Act 1 quintet, though, what is importantly different here, from the musical point of view, is the greater – more “sonata”-like? – space and energy given to the securing of the dominant key (mm. 21–29; note the extended root dominant pedal, compared to the “perfunctory” first-inversion harmony at mm. 34–35 in the Act 1 quintet) as Tamino enjoins Papageno to silence. And unlike in Act 1, the return to the tonic at measures 41–45 is not aligned with a new thought or action, but rather closes off Tamino’s exasperated question to Papageno.

The ensuing modulatory section, touching on IV and ii, again has its loose parallel in Act 1; but the second return to I at measures 64–65 (equivalent to the tutti “Silberglöckchen,” Smith’s “recapitulation,” at measure 184 in the earlier quintet) is reached merely through sequential repetition of the two preceding measures (g-sharp–e–a/f-sharp–d–g) and is again embedded within the ongoing confrontation between Tamino and the Ladies rather than initiating some new stage in the proceedings, which now lead musically to another extended dominant harmony that will provide the backdrop to Papageno’s intrusive E-flat (the pun on “unerhört!” is delicious) and what it portends. The “recurring instrumental phrase” (“motive” in Example 7.2) appears again to connect this dominant quietly forward to the tonic at measures 76–80; again, and in contrast to the Act 1 quintet (compare the dominant pedal leading to the Andante there), there is no obvious dramatic motive for this tonal return. The final reassertion of the tonic, at measure 112, is motivated by the single passage of the libretto set for “Alle Fünf” – thus, the only piece of genuine quintet writing in the whole number – but it essentially falls within the sway of the earlier arrival at measure 80 (see Example 7.2).

Example 7.2 Act 2 quintet (No. 12), formal overview.

As superficially similar (irrespective of appeals to conventional instrumental forms) as the tonal schemes of these two extended numbers may be considered to be (compare Examples 7.1 and 7.2²¹), what is more important to grasp is their different dynamics or qualities; this has much to do with the treatment of the tonic in each, especially in relation to the libretto and dramatic action. Also different is the more emphatic “staging” of the initial move to V (identified in Example 7.2 as the “structural” V, in contrast to Example 7.1) in the Act 1 quintet, and the second move toward that harmony (mm. 67–71), which has no counterpart in the Act 2 quintet. Most different of all, of course, are the two endings, the one interrupted by an ethereal vision and the other by an all too real peripeteia that has clearly audible musical consequences: the tonic is now unquestionably “there” at the end, but it is no longer the tonic that we have known.

Those Magnificent Boys in Their Flying Machine …

Reference has already been made to the special, and in some respects unique, nature of the ensembles in The Magic Flute. For Christoph Wolff, “compared to all of Mozart’s other operas, any attempt to classify the duets, trios and quintets likewise [as with the arias] reveals an unparalleled variety.”²² That variety is particularly plain to see if one compares the large structures of the quintets with one of the shortest numbers in the opera, the trio “Seid uns zum zweiten Mal willkommen” from Act 2, in which the Boys greet Tamino and Papageno and return their magical instruments to them. Its thirty-six measures parse effortlessly into 9x4-measure phrases; the harmony is stunningly simple, consisting of little more than alternating tonics and dominants. (Wolff’s “variety” can also be gauged in the comparison between this and the succeeding trio, No. 19, for Pamina, Tamino, and Sarastro, which at 78 measures has much more the tonal design of the Act 1 quintet, with which it shares both its key and its closing farewell wish.) The light, high-register accompaniment is not identical to that of the Andante “vision” in the Act 1 quintet, but serves similarly to transport us off ground and into the ether.

For all its manifest simplicity, though, this miniature harbors some fascinating subtleties. Mozart’s 6/8 meter could have accommodated Schikaneder’s iambic tetrameters in the manner of No. 7, the duet “Bei Männern,” also in 6/8 (though to imagine singing the words of one of these numbers to the music of the other is an object lesson in Mozart’s sense for text-music proprieties). As the autograph shows, he completely rebarred “Bei Männern,” shifting the barline by half a measure, which alters the words that take the main musical accent at line ends.²³ The accommodation of the text to the music in No. 16, however, creates sometimes inappropriate stresses at line beginnings (“Seid uns” rather than “Seid uns”; “die Flöte,” rather than “die Flöte,” m. 11).²⁴

Schikaneder’s ten lines of text comprise two quatrains and a closing couplet. At the outset, Mozart’s four-measure phrase accommodates two lines of text (mm. 5–8, 9–12, 13–16, 17–20). But because the setting of lines 5–6 (mm. 13–16) prolongs the dominant harmony reached at measure 12, the musical reprise at measures 17–18 corresponds to the second half of the second quatrain, rather than the first, as was the case at measures 5–6. That is, the musical and textual structure have drawn apart from one another. Furthermore, measures 19–20 do not reprise measures 7–8 but rather repeat measures 17–18, remaining on V at the close. The remaining two lines of the couplet are now each accommodated within a four-measure phrase, which again results in a change – a kind of augmentation – of the hypermetrical correlation between text and music. A further subtlety is that the pitch content of the first measure of these two phrases (measures 21 and 25) is closely related to that of the second measure of the initial four-measure phrase: the violin part in each case spans e2–d3. Finally, the overall metrical regularity of this little number is briefly disturbed, as the setting of the couplet is completed at measure 28. Here, as hitherto in all cases, the final cadence falls on the second beat of the fourth measure of the phrase. But Mozart’s decision to repeat “still, schweige still” in a further four-measure phrase has the effect of shifting the barline back by one beat (the autograph in this case shows no indecision on Mozart’s part, however), so that the tonic arrivals in measures 28 and 30 feel like downbeats. The original, correct metrical scheme is restored by the closing repetition of the very first phrase: as the Boys came, so they go.

All Together, Now!

Outside of the two act finales, examined elsewhere in this volume, the role of the Chorus is limited to two numbers, both in Act 2, and both scored for male voices only: No. 10, Sarastro’s aria with Chorus, and No. 18. That both of them begin with the words “O Isis und Osiris” is an obvious link; and while the libretto identifies the former as “Chorus” and the latter as “Chor,” Mozart’s autograph specifically identifies the characters as the “Chor der Priester” (or “Priestern”) in both instances.²⁵ What is particularly revealing here in the libretto directions is that Schikaneder envisaged No. 10 as a Chorus only; together with the March of the Priests (No. 9), which opens Act 2, and the dramatically and textually related No. 18, these numbers would have formed two imposing choral pillars at either end of the act prior to the finale. It was Mozart’s idea, then, to use Schikaneder’s text as an aria for Sarastro, the role of the chorus eventually being merely to echo the closing words of each of his two stanzas.

The scoring of the two numbers is similar, but not identical. The chorus is in four parts (TTBB) in No. 10, but in only three (TTB) in No. 18, which, together with the addition of flutes, oboes, and trumpets not found in No. 10 (this, however, uses the distinctive timbre of two basset horns along with the trio of trombones), gives this number a brighter, tessiturally higher character, naturally enhanced by the key of D rather than F major (No. 10). The instrumentation of both (including the all-male vocal texture) is crucial to the evocation of an appropriately antique, ecclesiastical tone, as also is the adoption of the hymn topos, which needs little elaboration in words. To compare this music to that of the Boys’ trio, No. 16, is to witness again that “unparalleled variety” in the music of this opera of which Wolff writes. And the comparison to No. 16, in fact, is perhaps even more instructive. All in all, No. 18, in its brevity (42 measures, admittedly at an adagio pace), its transparent binary form, and its three-part chordal texture, stands in close but starkly obverse relation to No. 16; it is, as it were, the “dark” side of that earlier number, from which it is musically divided by Pamina’s aria, No. 17. Equally, the Chorus of Priests extends that welcome return into Sarastro’s realm uttered by the Boys, but importantly preempts, too, the banishing of that “düst’re Nacht,” which will in due course hold no terrors for the finally united Pamina and Tamino; see measures 330–52 of the Act 2 finale, where not only the switch to homophonic writing but also the marked neighboring diminished harmonies in the last five measures invite one to recall the Priests’ earlier hieratic utterances.

“Nacht,” “Osiris,” and “Isis” all reappear in the final four lines of the libretto, at the very end of Act 2 (mm. 830–46). In a curious reversal of the earlier situation, the libretto specifies, for the first and only time, that these lines are sung by the “Chor von Priestern,” while Mozart’s autograph identifies only a “Chor.”²⁶ Moreover, this is no longer a male chorus, but one scored SATB. Mozart’s concluding ensemble in The Magic Flute eschews individual characters in favor of the collective; by extension, it is an ensemble that ultimately includes us all.

Compared to Mozart’s three Da Ponte operas and to the coronation opera with which it is exactly contemporaneous (La clemenza di Tito), The Magic Flute stands out for its eclectic blend of musical styles. Composed for the Theater auf der Wieden, The Magic Flute reflects the popular orientation of this suburban Viennese theater, incorporating musical characteristics from such diverse genres as magic opera, fairy-tale opera, Singspiel, and low comedy (especially the Hanswurst tradition), alongside stylistic elements from opera buffa and opera seria. While the work’s referential character results in part from Mozart’s kaleidoscopic use of musical topics (“styles or genres taken out of their proper context and used in another one,” according to Danuta Mirka¹), many individual moments seem to draw their inspiration from earlier works. At least one scene – the duet of the Armored Men in Act 2 – includes a musical quotation that has been the subject of much speculation and debate, but this quotation seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Some scholars, however, have posited that the opera contains a vast network of musical borrowings and allusions. This chapter explores these claims in the broader context of The Magic Flute’s extraordinary array of musical styles and genres and offers a detailed critical examination of its possible references to specific works.

Topics

Any consideration of musical references in The Magic Flute should begin by addressing topics (topoi). In the eighteenth century, topics were a lingua franca through which recognizable situations and emotions could be wordlessly communicated without relying on a listener’s familiarity with specific compositions. In The Magic Flute, topics work in tandem with key associations and orchestration to perform a variety of functions: (1) to orient the listener, (2) to aid in characterization, and (3) to connect individual moments with the opera’s larger themes.

The opening scene, Tamino’s encounter with the serpent and rescue by the Three Ladies, illustrates how Mozart deploys topics to orient and engage the listener. Following the overture, the opera begins in medias res. String tremolos, rapid arpeggios, scalar descents, and the key of C minor – all hallmarks of the tempesta or Sturm und Drang style – conjure a “stormy” atmosphere that eighteenth-century audiences would have instantly recognized.² Without yet knowing who Tamino is or why he is being pursued, the listener knows that he is in danger, well before he cries for help in measure 18. When the Three Ladies arrive to vanquish the serpent, there is an accompanying change of topic: wind-band orchestration and dotted rhythms indicate a march. This new topic, which precedes the Three Ladies’ cries of “Triumph!” is reinforced by the modulation to E-flat major, a key that was associated with the classically heroic ideal of Tugend (virtue) in many theatrical works.³ This association is made explicit in Mozart’s Act 1 finale, in which Tamino sings – in E-flat major – that he has come to the temple to seek “that which belongs to love and virtue” (“Der Lieb’ und Tugend Eigentum”). Mozart hence uses topics – together with keys and scoring – to ground the listener’s experience of the scene, while also forecasting tonalities that will gain significance as the opera unfolds.

Mozart also uses topics to introduce and animate his characters. The folk-like style of Papageno’s strophic “Vogelfänger” aria, for instance, marks him as an everyman, in contrast to Tamino, whose noble upbringing and loftier purpose are reflected in the more elevated style of his through-composed “portrait” aria. The Queen of the Night’s recitative and aria in Act 1, meanwhile, are conspicuously grandiose, recalling opera seria. A full-scale orchestral introduction marks her spectacular entrance; accompanied recitative allows the Queen to introduce herself; and an impressive two-tempo aria displays her emotional range, moving from a sentimental G minor (as she laments the loss of her daughter) to a coloratura-laden B-flat major (as she entrusts Tamino with Pamina’s rescue). In “Der Hölle Rache,” Mozart combines the “rage” aria type with the strict contrapuntal style, infusing the Queen’s ire with a particular sense of authority.⁴ Sarastro’s music, by contrast, tends toward the feierlich (a solemn, hymn-like style) and is suggestive of Masonic ritual, while the music of his servant Monostatos invokes the popular alla Turca style through its circular melodic figures, limited harmonic vocabulary, and repetitive phrases. Rooted in exoticizing Western European depictions of Turks and Turkishness, this style could also signify cultural and racial Otherness more generally.⁵ Pamina’s G-minor aria “Ach ich fühl’s,” meanwhile, exemplifies an aria type associated with sentimental heroines in distress; however, she also shares a folk-like duet with Papageno, imbuing her character with a greater emotional breadth than that of her counterpart, Tamino.

Two topics, the “strict” style (variously called the strenge, gebundene, or fugenartige Schreibart by the music theorist Heinrich Christoph Koch) and the feierlich, relate individual moments to the opera’s overarching themes. Standing in stark contrast to the galant idiom that more typically characterizes Mozart’s writing, these two styles help to depict the opera’s elements of ritual and mysticism. On the one hand, they create distinctive musical atmospheres that help dramatize the libretto’s fantastical invocation of distant or mysterious cultures (ancient Egypt, Freemasonry). On the other hand, they recall contemporary sacred genres, reinforcing the religious tone of the temple scenes. In the case of the strict style, which appears most prominently in the overture and the duet of the Armored Men (on which more later), the “law” of counterpoint analogizes the “law” of the temple: by alluding to the strict style, Mozart musically illustrates the notion that Tamino must follow the law in order to reach Enlightenment. However, as Keith Chapin has noted, “the rules of the Temple are malleable”: Tamino, despite being a prince, is allowed to become an initiate (Act 2, scene 1); similarly, as Pamina proves her worth, the interdiction on the initiation of women is rescinded (Act 2, scene 28). Chapin views the strict style as a more flexible signifier, arguing that it stands for the progressive rationalism of the Enlightenment era. The blending of galant themes with contrapuntal procedures in the overture, he argues, “symbolizes the process of modernization that the subsequent action represents.”⁶

Musical Sources and Affinities

Another category of musical references involves allusions to specific works, whether by Mozart or by other composers. Writing in 1913, Théodore de Wyzewa suggested that “the score of Die Zauberflöte practically presents us with a ‘pot-pourri,’” calling for scholars to assemble “an inventory of those ‘sources’ from which [Mozart] drew the varied materials for his last opera.”⁷ Although Wyzewa himself never attempted such an inventory, A. Hyatt King took up the call in a 1950 article, republished in 1955 as part of his book Mozart in Retrospect: Studies in Criticism and Bibliography. Uncovering the “sources” for The Magic Flute has remained an area of interest into the twenty-first century.⁸

King’s study is a tour de force, offering approximately one hundred precursors for the opera’s themes (see Table 8.1). Many of these derive from Otto Jahn’s Mozart biography (as well as its revisions by Hermann Abert and Hermann Deiters); others stem from the work of Wyzewa and Georges de Saint-Foix; still others from Jean Chantavoine’s Mozart dans Mozart, King’s own observations, and a handful of other sources. A few cases, such as the claim that the overture’s fugal subject is based on the opening theme of Clementi’s Sonata in B-flat, Op. 24, No. 2, date back to the early nineteenth century. According to his pupil Ludwig Berger, Clementi played this sonata during his piano duel with Mozart in the presence of the emperor in December 1781.⁹

King credits the pastiche-like quality of The Magic Flute in part to Mozart’s incredible memory and in part to the haste and difficult conditions in which he composed the opera. He concludes that “Die Zauberflöte presents a paradox virtually without parallel in music history – an opera universally admitted to be a work of genius, and seemingly one of striking originality, which is in part a synthesis of material drawn from a variety of sources.”¹⁰ However, the emergence of a work of “striking originality” from a “synthesis of material” would not have been thought paradoxical in the eighteenth century, nor was it without parallel (one thinks of the “recycling” practices of Handel and Bach). Moreover, many of the melodies that King proposes seem to be related to The Magic Flute by virtue of what Jan LaRue has termed “family resemblance” rather than actual reminiscence.¹¹ Despite its inclusion of many intriguing and plausible connections, King’s inventory of sources raises perhaps more questions than it answers.

Ironically, King did not locate any sources for The Magic Flute in the handful of works that most closely resemble it: the fairy-tale Singspiele produced by Schikaneder at the Theater auf der Wieden. These works – Oberon, König der Elfen (November 7, 1789), Die schöne Isländerin, oder Der Muffti von Samarkanda (April 22, 1790), Der Stein der Weisen, oder Die Zauberinsel (September 9, 1790), and Der wohltätige Derwisch, oder Die Schellenkappe (early 1791) – contain many parallels with The Magic Flute.¹² Perhaps the most significant of these are found in Der Stein der Weisen (The Philosopher’s Stone), a collaborative opera to which Mozart contributed music. As David J. Buch has observed, in addition to offering a “romantic mixture of solemn, comic, magic, and love scenes,” both works feature “a similar two-act structure with an introduzione, large-scale episodic finales, and similar arias and ensembles,” “musical segments for the working of the mechanical stage and for magic episodes,” and “traditional supernatural devices” such as “enchanted march music, magical wind ensembles, and the use of descending octave leaps for magic invocations.”¹³ Astromonte’s entrance music, attributed to Johann Baptist Henneberg, may have provided a model for the Queen of the Night’s: in both cases, a syncopated prelude designed to accompany stage machinery gives way to an accompanied recitative and two-part aria ending with a coloratura section in B-flat major.¹⁴ Astromonte’s proclamation “Zittert nicht” (Tremble not) even anticipates the Queen’s opening line, “O zittre nicht.” Of course, there are also important differences between these two numbers: while the Queen’s aria is in a closed bipartite form, for instance, Astromonte’s initiates a through-composed complex involving the chorus; the Queen’s aria also includes a poignant slow section in the minor mode that is unlike anything sung by Astromonte. Thus, if Mozart modeled the Queen of the Night’s entrance on Astromonte’s, he felt free to adapt Henneberg’s concept to suit his dramatic needs.

Henneberg may also have inspired another musical idea in The Magic Flute. As Alan Tyson noted, his children’s song “Das Veilchen und der Dornstrauch” (The Violet and the Thornbush), published in a collection to which Mozart also contributed three numbers (Liedersammlung für Kinder und Kinderfreunde; Vienna, 1791), contains a brief passage reminiscent of the closing idea in the first quintet for the Three Ladies, Tamino, and Papageno (No. 5, mm. 230–33 or 234–37).¹⁵ Henneberg was the Kapellmeister at the Theater auf der Wieden and participated in the earliest rehearsals and performances of The Magic Flute. Hence, it is plausible, as Tyson suggests, that Mozart referenced the song as a tip of the hat to his younger colleague. That said, the passage in question is so short (and, arguably, musically commonplace) that a definitive conclusion is difficult to reach.

Papageno’s “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” and the Duet of the Armored Men

Of course, in situations involving music by other composers, Mozart’s documented knowledge of the work in question may enhance the plausibility of the musical relationship. Here, the complex case of Papageno’s aria “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” comes to the fore. In a note published in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1840, Carl Ferdinand Becker drew attention to the melodic similarity between the opening of Papageno’s aria and the seventh and eighth lines of the popular Lutheran chorale “Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren” (see Examples 8.1a and 8.1b). Noting that Mozart quotes a different Lutheran chorale in the duet of the Armored Men, Becker found it unsurprising that “Nun lob” should appear in The Magic Flute, even if the reference was an “innocent and, for the composer himself, unconscious mystification.”¹⁶ Becker never attempted to answer the question of how precisely Mozart knew the chorale, nor did his suggestion of an “unconscious” reminiscence require him to demonstrate that the reference was of any particular significance.

Example 8.1 Some melodic antecedents of Papageno’s aria “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” (No. 20).

There, the matter seemingly rested until Max Friedländer’s 1902 study Das deutsche Lied im 18. Jahrhundert, in which he derived the tune of Papageno’s aria from an altogether different source, the folksong “Es war ein wilder Wassermann” (see Example 8.1c). Friedländer mentioned the folksong as a source for Friederich Kunzen’s 1786 lied “Au bord d’une fontaine” (see Example 8.1d), noting that Mozart too used the melody for Papageno’s aria. However, he provided no evidence that Mozart (or Kunzen) knew it. Nevertheless, Hermann Abert (1919–21) reiterated and amplified Friedländer’s notion, mentioning operatic melodies by Galuppi (1771), Grétry (1778), and Paisiello (1784) that have a similar design and folklike character (and that Mozart was perhaps more likely to have known). Chantavoine (1948) suggested yet another piece with a related melody, Bonafede’s Act 1 aria from Haydn’s Il mondo della luna (1777). But in a 1963 article, Frederick W. Sternfeld, without explicitly rejecting Friedländer’s claim, reopened the possibility that Mozart based Papageno’s aria not on the folksong but on “Nun lob,” providing ample evidence that Mozart encountered this chorale in the 1780s through settings by J. S. Bach.¹⁷

In terms of melodic provenance, Sternfeld’s case is the stronger of the two. But which is the more plausible model? On the one hand, Mozart certainly knew “Nun lob,” but from a generic, stylistic, and textual point of view, the chorale has little to do with the drama at hand. Furthermore, although the melodic resemblance is striking, the tune in question comes rather incongruously from the seventh and eighth phrases of the chorale (themselves appearing, with antiphonal passages interspersed, in the middle section of Bach’s motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV225 – a work Mozart both heard and studied in 1789). On the other hand, while we cannot be certain that Mozart ever encountered the folksong suggested by Friedländer, here the genre, tone, and text resonate with Papageno’s character. In addition, the first two measures of the folksong align neatly with the beginning of Papageno’s melody (although the next two measures are less closely related to it than the eighth phrase of “Nun lob”). Which domains should one privilege in asserting a musical borrowing?

In the operatic context, one might pose another question: Assuming Mozart was aware of what he was doing, what dramatic purpose does the musical borrowing serve? A subtle allusion to a Lutheran chorale seems to be above Papageno’s pay grade. Indeed, it seems more likely that Papageno’s aria was designed to bring out the artless naiveté – “der schein der Bekannt” – that J. A. P. Schulz and his circle (including Kunzen) sought in composing lieder in a folklike style.¹⁸ Songs like Kunzen’s “Au bord d’une fontaine” and “Der Landmann” (Example 8.1e) – both related to “Es war ein wilder Wassermann,” but published in Mozart’s day – in this respect represent a contemporary “type” of which Papageno’s aria is an example. Though it is impossible to prove or disprove Mozart’s indebtedness to “Nun lob,” I would argue that his engagement with contemporary folksongs – and their artful adaptations on the operatic stage – is ultimately of greater significance for understanding “Ein Mädchen.”

The strong desire among scholars to link Mozart and J. S. Bach has also led to curious conclusions regarding the provenance of the chorale in the duet of the Armored Men, the only indisputable musical quotation in the opera. The source, Martin Luther’s “Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein” (1524) was identified as early as 1798 by Friedrich Rochlitz.¹⁹ (Mozart slightly alters Luther’s melody, omitting the repetition of the Aufgesang and adding a newly composed final phrase to the Abgesang to allow for a tonic cadence.) Abert maintained that Mozart discovered this melody in the first volume of Johann Philipp Kirnberger’s treatise Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (1771–79), where it is used as a cantus firmus in no fewer than twelve separate examples.²⁰ One of these, a trio in B minor, not only relates to the duet of the Armored Men, but also closely resembles Mozart’s cantus firmus sketch of 1782 based on the same chorale melody and written in the same key of B minor (see Example 8.2).²¹

Example 8.2a Kirnberger, trio on “Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein,” mm. 1–9, Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (Berlin and Königsberg: G. J. Decker and G. L. Hartung, 1774; first published 1771), vol. 1, 238–39 (clefs modernized for ease of comparison).

Example 8.2b Mozart, cantus firmus sketch on “Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein,” mm. 1–8, KV Anh. 78/K. 620b (1782), Neue Mozart Ausgabe II/5/19 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970; digital version, Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, 2006), 377.

Example 8.2 Precursors of the duet of the two Armored Men by Kirnberger (1771) and Mozart (1782).

In a 1956 article, however, Reinhold Hammerstein argued that Mozart was unlikely to have found the melody in Kirnberger’s book. His reasoning hinged on two claims: first, Mozart does not appear to have known the treatise (nor was it in his Nachlass), and second, Kirnberger reproduced the chorale without its text, an element that for Hammerstein was a crucial impetus for the musical quotation.²² Hammerstein instead suggested that Mozart may have either found the chorale in a Protestant hymnbook or heard it in the Masonic lodges, arguing that its treatment in the duet of the Armored Men owed more to Bach’s motet Jesu, meine Freude, BWV227. To be sure, Mozart’s encounter with Bach’s music was transformative and may well have influenced his approach in this scene; however, the scene’s relationship with Kirnberger’s examples – especially in light of Mozart’s sketches – is too strong to ignore. Recently, Markus Rathey has provided compelling evidence that Mozart knew and engaged with Kirnberger’s treatise, detailing the musical similarities among Kirnberger’s examples, the sketches, and the scene.²³

Whether or not Luther’s text, a paraphrase of Psalm 12, motivated Mozart to select “Ach Gott” for the duet of the Armored Men remains a matter for speculation. As Hammerstein and others have noted, Luther’s fifth stanza – with its images of fire, trial, and purification – relates strongly to Schikaneder’s text for the scene.²⁴ Of course, Mozart may well have come into contact with the chorale in multiple forms; one need not dismiss the significance of the chorale text simply because Kirnberger did not include it in his examples. Ultimately, however, the intertextual reference to Psalm 12 is less significant than the presence and setting of the tune itself. By alluding to the baroque genre of the chorale prelude in a Singspiel, Mozart blends the sacred and the secular, the “ancient” and the “modern,” as well as the unfamiliar and the familiar. In so doing, he lends an oracle-like authority to the proclamation read by the two Armored Men, impressing upon both Tamino and the listener that the path to Enlightenment will be full of great hardships (“voll Beschwerden”) and still greater mysteries.

A Musical Panorama

Beethoven is said to have admired The Magic Flute because it employs “almost every genre, from the lied to the chorale and the fugue,” and because of the way Mozart used different keys “according to their specific psychical qualities.”²⁵ As in the case of tonalities with their characteristic – if not always agreed-upon – emotional associations, the opera’s musical references add psychological depth to its characters and situations while illuminating the libretto’s most important themes. No theatergoer, then or now, could claim to have a comprehensive picture of these references. Indeed, some of the melodic borrowings that modern scholars have heard in The Magic Flute would probably have surprised Mozart, who was, after all, using a common vocabulary and engaging intuitively, as well as intentionally, with his musical environment. Nonetheless, The Magic Flute presents a musical panorama unlike that of perhaps any other contemporary opera. Much more than the result of a patchwork approach to composition, the work’s stylistic allusions and juxtapositions are an essential element of its dramatic conception. Mozart’s wide-ranging referentiality both elaborates and elevates Schikaneder’s libretto, bringing its singular combination of comedic, heroic, magical, romantic, allegorical, and fairy-tale elements to life.

Thus wrote E. T. A. Hoffmann, somewhat world-weary, in 1820.¹ Hoffmann sketched out the inevitable development of style: music marches in the direction of increasing loudness and strangeness, in the direction of militarization. Hoffmann went on to comment that the death of Gluck – whose orchestration was widely admired – was well timed, as it prevented him from completing his opera Der Hermannschlact, for which he imagined creating new brass instruments. Gluck’s demise spared the world his descent into excessive orchestration. In this context, Hoffmann’s invocation of The Magic Flute is noteworthy: Janus-faced, it simultaneously represents the kind of modern music that would have shocked earlier eighteenth-century theorists, while also serving as a model of moderation in comparison with the music that followed it.

Hoffmann’s chosen scene – the trial of fire and water – has attracted its fair share of musicological attention. Igor Stravinsky heard it as morbid; Carolyn Abbate heard it, in its literal repetition, as mechanical, like a Flötenuhr: perfect and dead.² Jean Starobinski heard the flute in this passage as a form of “lenient, non-violent power” that ultimately represents the “power of music and musicians.”³ Marianne Tettlebaum has stressed the static nature of the music and the strange lack of any sense of real threat.⁴ Hoffmann, however, alights on this example, not for its morbidity or strangeness but for its restraint. Tamino plays a graceful, adagio melody on his flute, accompanied by subdued brass and timpani; it is a march, but the gentlest of marches. In its subversion of a military topic, it represents the inverse of music’s militaristic progression that Hoffmann so decried. For Hoffmann, it embodied Mozart’s good taste.

As one of the few scenes in which the titular magic flute actually performs, it is hardly surprising that this scene has invited repeated analysis. Indeed, one might expect an opera named for an enchanted instrument to brim with unusual or immediately striking orchestration, or at least for the magic flute itself to have more strikingly powerful music. But in this scene there is no bombast, rather a kind of musical effortlessness. The effortlessness of Tamino’s trials is in keeping with the larger sound-world of the entire opera, in which light textures and ethereal sonorities dominate. At the same time, such apparent effortlessness bespeaks the work done by instruments and orchestration within the opera: instruments function both as (magical) agents, indicators of characters, and as stage props. This chapter attempts to bring these two aspects of the opera into productive dialog, considering both Mozart’s approach to his orchestra and the opera’s dominant instrumental textures while also thinking about the complicated forms of instrumental agency that play out on the stage.

The Orchestral Basics

From the perspective of orchestration, The Magic Flute represents a fascinating historical moment. It draws on, and plays with, ideas of instrumental character – that is, the notion that individual instruments have particular, well-defined dispositions that govern their dramatic deployment. This was intimately tied to the late eighteenth-century consolidation of the orchestra as a musical body. As Dolan has written elsewhere, this transformation went hand in hand with the notion that the orchestra functioned as an instrumental society, bringing together a diverse group of instruments, whose contrasting meanings were strengthened and reinforced by that diversity.⁵ This created a semiotic paradox: this generative power required composers to respect the nature of individual instruments, and yet the idea of instrumental character found its strongest articulation at precisely the moment composers began to use instruments in ways that challenged or subverted their characters. Carl Zelter complained in 1798 about the ways in which composers had stopped respecting the basic character of musical instruments: for example, the flute, the “sweetest of all instruments,” was made to “shriek.”⁶ For him, contemporary composers had ruined special effects – such as using trumpets and drums in an adagio movement – through sheer overuse.⁷ C. F. Michaelis, in 1805, likewise wrote about the misuse of wind instruments, reminding his reader that each instrument had its own emotional range: “One [wind instrument] is more suitable for gentle complaints, the other better able to express deep melancholy, gloomy seriousness. One is better suited to cheerful and light effusions, the other more to tenderness and the comfort of the familiar; one is more suitable for feminine gentleness and indulgence, another better able to express masculine strength, courage, and defiance.”⁸ For Michaelis, these instruments were characters that were both natural and under threat. Mozart’s orchestration by and large respects the qualities of the individual instruments: we encounter no shrieking flutes. When he does subvert an instrument’s expected behavior – such as in the trial scene – it is typically to use instruments in ways that are gentler and more understated than would be typical.

The basic instrumental forces of The Magic Flute are in keeping with late eighteenth-century orchestral norms: the score calls for two flutes (one doubling on piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets (doubling on basset horns), two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings, plus Papageno’s magic bells, which are identified in the autograph as istromento d’acciaio and understood to be a keyed glockenspiel.⁹ Most numbers use a relatively small subset of the full orchestral complement, though that subset varies continuously from number to number. Trumpets, drums, and trombones are used – as one would expect – at special moments of heightened drama; the basset horns likewise serve to signal the solemnity of Sarastro’s realm and are heard only at the end of the first act finale and at the beginning of the second act. The piccolo is called for in just one number in the score: Monostatos’s second act aria.

Erik Smith has noted that the orchestration of The Magic Flute is more restricted than that of Mozart’s contemporary operas (Così fan tutte and La c lemenza di Tito), something he attributed to the “markedly inferior” orchestra of the Theater auf der Wieden in comparison to that of the Nationaltheater.¹⁰ More recently, however, David J. Buch has argued against the popular notion that performances at the Theater auf der Wieden were shoddy: plenty of reports circulated praising the high level of musicianship at the theatre.¹¹ Indeed, we might note that neither Così fan tutte nor La clemenza di Tito call for trombones or basset horns, and, while Mozart favors lighter orchestral textures, the range of color in this opera is greater than in his other operas. Indeed, as Rose Rosengard Subotnik has stressed, Mozart’s approach to the sound-world of The Magic Flute is one that emphasizes not just sonic diversity but an ecosystem of instrumental sound that ranges from the “civilized violins” to the “earthy panpipes.”¹² Furthermore, the less soloistic writing for the orchestra is also a dramatic necessity: in order for the magic flute’s (relatively limited) solo moments to carry dramatic power, they must stand in relief against the orchestral palette, never overshadowed by other moments of solo writing for other (nonmagical) instruments.

Instrumental Characters

Mozart uses orchestration to help shape the characters on stage, in ways both subtle and bold. In the Act 1 quintet, for example, when Papageno’s mouth has been padlocked by the Three Ladies as a punishment for lying, his repeated “hm”s are doubled at pitch by the bassoon. The doubling of Papageno’s vocal noise with the sound of the double-reed produces a form of orchestrational synthesis. At this moment, the sound production of Papageno’s voice is distributed between his body and the orchestra. We might understand this either as Papageno becoming an instrument or, perhaps, as the bassoon becoming part of Papageno. Abbate has drawn attention to the strangeness of how Papageno sings (and does not sing) with his magic bells and to the unusual timbral effects of the blending of voice and bells.¹³ But Papageno’s instrumentally enhanced humming shows how chimerical, “man-instrument” timbres can arise under less magical conditions. Bassoons can create musical cyborgs, too.

At other moments, instruments help to shape characters in a more complementary manner. The piccolo that makes its sole appearance in Monostatos’s troubling aria is a striking example.¹⁴ Richard Wigmore has suggested that this instrument makes the aria all the more sinister, presumably because of its exotic connotations.¹⁵ Certainly, the piccolo was used in “Turkish” contexts to invoke the sound of a forceful Janissary band: recall the overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio, where the piccolo is deployed in all of its militaristic shrillness. In this sense, one might understand how the piccolo could be heard as menacing. And yet here the flittering, scintillating melody, which is to be played piano throughout to give it the effect of distance, sounds more skittish than threatening. The piccolo, even as it provides a sonic marker of Otherness, also serves to lighten the overall texture. We might hear it sympathetically as conveying Monostatos’s nervousness. As with the trial scene, Mozart’s setting softens and tempers the tension.

The Three Spirits are arguably the “lightest” of Die Zauberflöte’s characters: not only are they performed by ethereal boy sopranos but they can fly. (We do not discover this until the second act, when the Spirits return the confiscated musical instruments to Tamino and Papageno – and deliver to them much-needed sustenance – with the help of a flying machine.) In line with Masonic symbolism, the Spirits might be identified, Anthony Besch observes, with “the element of air.”¹⁶ Translated into music, this means that lower-register instruments are used sparingly, as are sustained notes and legato lines in the melodies, thus imbuing them with a breathy, buoyant quality. Even the mere mention of the Three Spirits is enough to invoke this texture: we hear a sonic preview when, in the Act 1 quintet, the Three Ladies reassure Tamino and Papageno that the Three Spirits will be on hand to provide counsel during their quest (“Drei Knäbchen, jung, schön, hold und weise/ Umschweben euch auf eurer Reise”). Here, the tempo slows to an andante and warm clarinets enter for the first time over pizzicato strings. The first two measures of the Ladies’ sotto voce melodic line alternates eighth notes with rests, before yielding to a gently lilting figure. Anticipating the arrival of the Spirits, this passage includes many of their musical attributes.

At the beginning of the first act finale, when the Spirits lead Tamino to the temples of Wisdom, Reason, and Nature, muted trumpets, piano trombones, and muted timpani provide some rhythmic articulation for a hymnlike melody in the violins and a harmonic cushion in the flutes, clarinets, violas, and celli. What Erik Smith describes as “a suitably air-borne effect” is achieved when the brass and timpani drop out as the Boys themselves take up the melody.¹⁷ And arguably the lightest orchestration underscores the first appearance of the flying machine in Act 2, scene 16, when they come to the aid of Tamino and Papageno. Their trio opens with an unaccompanied violin melody of rising pairs of thirty-second notes, which are answered by sighing bassoons, second violins, and violas. As the melodic peak is reached and the violin hiccups tumble earthwards into trills, they are joined by the flute and bassoon. The violin quips continue to fill rests between vocal phrases, which are supported by the remainder of the strings.

The Three Spirits are from the genus of the deus ex machina, the theatrical conceit where a divine being intervenes to bring about a happy ending. That the Spirits in some way “govern” the opera was not lost on the director of the 2019 production of The Magic Flute for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Yuval Sharon cast the entire opera as a puppet show, complete with the singers on strings. Instead of travelling in a flying machine, the Three Spirits are contained within what appear to be gas canisters, floating on a cloud. As the opera progresses, their activity expands – cutting Pamina’s strings and playing the bells for Papageno as he summons Papagena – until their true identity is revealed. For the final chorus, the backdrop rises to reveal a puppet theatre, of miniature proportions, presided over by the Three Spirits, who now appear as boys at play, in casual clothes, jumping up and down excitedly with some friends. The Spirits turn out to be puppeteers par excellence: they keep everything light, while remaining in total control. We might say that they are in charge of both the drama and, it would seem, the orchestration.

Instruments as Characters

Three instruments feature in the opera’s diegesis: the magic flute, the magic bells, and Papageno’s pipes. These onstage instruments are by no means unique to opera. Think of Orpheus’s lyre, Radamès’s triumphal procession, or Beckmesser’s lute. Indeed, certain instruments frequently migrate to the stage in opera – aurally, if not necessarily visibly, so distinctive is their timbre – to accompany drinking songs, serenades, and ballads or to signal royal or military company. In other words, the onstage presence of musical instruments makes explicit moments of self-conscious music-making.

In The Magic Flute, though, we find a somewhat different situation, one that goes beyond the demarcation of narrative worlds and performance modes to open up questions of musical agency, materiality, and meaning. For a start, neither Tamino’s flute nor Papageno’s bells function as straightforward accompaniment. Tamino’s flute cannot, of course: he must either sing or (pretend to) play. Benedict Schack, the tenor who premiered the role of Tamino, was also known to play wind instruments, and so for a long time – persisting into the Grove Music entry on The Magic Flute today – many have assumed that Schack both sang the role of Tamino and played the flute. Theodore Albrecht, however, has convincingly discredited this assumption, which seems to have been based on overgenerous readings of Schack’s musical abilities, as well as on a misunderstanding of what was meant by the fact that, according to contemporary reports, he “sang and played” the role of Tamino.¹⁸ So, Schack and his descendants usually mime – and sometimes there is no pretense even of that.

While Tamino’s flute must function always as a solo instrument, Papageno’s bells could, in theory, be pressed into service as an accompaniment instrument, since the performer can sing and play at the same time. At first, however, there is some ambiguity around the bells’ playing mechanism – more specifically, around whether or not they required a player. As with Tamino’s flute, Papageno receives the magic bells from the Three Ladies in preparation for their quest to save Pamina; but unlike the flute, the bells are something of an organological enigma. The autograph identifies the instrument as an istromento d’acciaio; the libretto specifies “eine Maschine wie ein hölzernes Gelächter” (a machine like wooden laughter). Confusing matters further, when the Three Ladies present Papageno with the bells in Act 1, Papageno asks what is inside, suggesting that he is handling some kind of a box. The Ladies respond accordingly by explaining that the bells are inside, but Papageno remains perplexed about their musical nature. For it is not immediately apparent to him what he needs to do with the bells – indeed, whether the bells need him to do anything at all. “Will I also be able to play them?” he asks the Three Ladies. “Yes, of course!” comes the answer.

Despite this quashing of Papageno’s initial uncertainty, the pragmatics, the pitfalls, and the pranks of performance can sustain the instrument’s ambiguity. Mozart himself was fully cognizant of – and, arguably, excited by – the potential to manipulate the grey space between the narrative world of the drama and the realities of performance. In an oft-quoted letter to his wife, Constanze, Mozart delights in his interference during Papageno’s Act 2 aria:

The instrument responsible for the onstage prop’s acoustic presence is understood to be a keyboard instrument not dissimilar to a celeste. Onstage, the bells are represented by all sorts of contraptions, from magical-looking machines to tambourine-like instruments. Rarely do modern productions aim to conjure the illusion that these props actually produce the music we hear: the quirky boxes and twinkling rattles are obviously incapable of producing the florid runs and quick arpeggiations of the bells’ music.

Such music, furthermore, far exceeds the role of accompaniment. As Abbate observes, while the alteration of the bells and Papageno’s voice is born of an “acoustic fact of life” (i.e., the original instrument would not have been able to carry over Schikaneder’s singing and so had to play in the gaps between the voice), this compositional necessity has taken on a symbolic dimension, entangling Papageno in an aesthetic of automation and mechanization.²⁰

There is, of course, an instrument that Papageno does play: his panpipes. At the opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum to the bells, panpipes connote nature and earthliness, and therefore might seem an obvious extension of Papageno’s status as Naturmensch. Indeed, the five-note panpipe call functions as a metonym for Papageno and is one of the most characteristic keynotes of the opera. As a consequence, perhaps, the agency behind Papageno’s Waldflötchen or Faunen-Flötchen, as they are identified in the libretto and score, respectively, have hardly received much scrutiny in the literature. Since it is notated as part of Papageno’s vocal line, it seems likely that Schikaneder did indeed play the pipes himself. What precise type of instrument he played is more ambiguous, since the iconic image of Schikaneder as Papageno does not include the pipes (later images do often show Papageno with a five-pipe set). Furthermore, panpipes are relatively ephemeral instruments, so precious few examples of panpipes survive from the eighteenth century. Interestingly, however, starting in the years after the first performances of The Magic Flute and stretching across the nineteenth century, panpipes began to be referred to in German as “Papagenopfeife” or “Papagenoflöten.”²¹ Today, Papageno might play or he might mime. A few instrument makers specialize in special five-note sets of pipes, specifically made for productions of The Magic Flute. These are often not true panpipes, but a set of fippled whistles, which are easier to play.²²

Today, directors and performers of Die Zauberflöte are confronted with the question of how instruments should behave dramatically onstage. In the recent revival of Simon McBurney’s 2013 production for the English National Opera, Papageno (Thomas Oliemans) carries around a tabletop celeste in a briefcase, enlisting the assistance of a player from the pit for the Act 1 finale. In his Act 2 aria, in the hope of summoning his mate Papagena, he plays the instrument himself on stage. Thematizing the question of agency, McBurney makes sure that we all know exactly who and what is making the music. And the flute receives equally special treatment. When Pamina is confirmed alive by the Priests in the Act 1 finale, Tamino is moved to express his thanks through music. And so, McBurney’s Tamino, played by Rupert Charlesworth in 2019, descends the steps into the pit and offers his flute, glinting in the spotlight, to the principal flautist. The ensuing musical offering is delivered onstage, in full view of the audience. When Tamino/Charlesworth joins in and his vocal lines begin to dovetail with those of the flute, the gestural language of the performance is expanded from that of a solo to that of a duet: singer and flautist enact their musical partnership through movement as well as sound.

These visuals foreground the chain of labor relations involved in this particular act of music-making and, in so doing, flatten out the hierarchy of voice and instrument, singer and musician – and even of the music itself. Echoing the readings of the flute’s music proffered by Tettlebaum and Abbate as detached and mechanical, respectively, McBurney’s magic flute is neither Tamino’s prop nor his appendage, but a fully agential character, capable of asserting its will, albeit with the help of a player. By putting his flute, quite literally, in the hands of a flautist, Tamino/Charlesworth separates his musical persona from that of the flute, making explicit the distinction between each source of musical power. In doing so, he also highlights something else – namely, that when the on-stage actors make no serious attempt to mime their performances, the music can appear all the more magical, as the sound so clearly exceeds its apparent materiality.

It might seem as though we have strayed a long way from the issue of orchestration and instrumentation. But these more overt ways in which the opera plays with instruments and agency should attune us to the subtler ways in which Mozart uses instrumentation to define the various characters’ personalities. The light touch that pervades the opera – from the understated brass and timpani that support the flute through the trials to the celestial pizzicati of the Three Spirits’ lofty music – likewise tells us something about instrumental labor in this opera. We might say that the magic of The Magic Flute is its ability to create a world in which humans and instruments work together so smoothly and naturally and where they so easily complement each other’s agency.²³

Complaints about the libretto have long shadowed The Magic Flute. The spoken dialogue especially has been disparaged, both for its contribution to a purportedly incomprehensible plot and because of traditions that exalt music and devalue speech in an operatic context. Criticisms of this type were immediate. Berlin’s Musikalishen Wochenblatt reported in 1791 that “Die Zauberflöte … fails to have the hoped-for success, the content and the dialogue [Sprache] of the work were just too terrible.”¹ Count Zinzendorf wrote in his diary that “the music and the decorations are pretty; the rest an unbelievable farce.”² A review of a French adaptation of 1865 also targeted the spoken word, expressing the wish that “everything in Schikaneder’s dialogue that is unnecessary or makes no sense” had been cut, leaving only “the sung part, which has the delicate and ideal meaning that Mozart’s genius adds to the hollow words.”³ By 1913, Edward J. Dent could famously conclude: “The libretto of Die Zauberflöte has generally been considered to be one of the most absurd specimens of that form of literature in which absurdity is only too often a matter of course.”⁴

While this unfortunate reception history has often been used to justify broad cuts in the dialogue in modern productions, not everyone subscribes to this view. Conductor René Jacobs has championed the dialogue: “No opera loses so much as Die Zauberflöte if one strips it of its drama, and that means also and above all the spoken dialogue.”⁵ Even if it is accepted that the spoken text is important, there is, however, an additional consideration for modern scholars and audiences. Recent criticism of the text has been focused less on the supposed absurdity of the plot and more on issues of gender and race. And even though the sung portions of the libretto contain much of what is deemed offensive, the dialogue remains an easy target for excision. Of course, the spoken word in opera has always been more controversial than what is sung, hence the disparity between the level of censorship of plays and their transformations as operatic texts.

The critic Walter Bernhart asks, “What is the significance or the benefit of the absence of music in the spoken sections?” He concludes that “it is only in spoken dialogue that wit and intellectual brilliance can find comprehensible expression, and … that a rational argument which tries to explain and interpret the dramatic situation can meaningfully be developed; whenever such reflections are done in singing they are bound to fail.”⁶ Wit is essential to Singspiel, and the dialogues in The Magic Flute provide a range from slapstick humor to more sophisticated wordplay. While the spoken words may not always aim for “intellectual brilliance,” they do “interpret the dramatic situation” with nuanced treatment of controversial issues that are essential to understanding the opera as a whole and also to evaluating modern claims of moral superiority. To put this another way, close reading of many passages demonstrates that words and phrases cannot be cut without consequence.

The dialogue provides a wealth of detail with respect to character and plot that needs to be understood as essential to the whole dramatic action. To illustrate, let me begin at the end of Act 1, scene 1. When, according to the stage directions, Tamino “awakens and looks timidly about,” the audience has already watched the Three Ladies kill the serpent.⁷ In the ensuing exchange, Tamino unwittingly feeds Papageno the language with which to claim credit for the women’s action: “So you strangled [erdrosselt] it?” Papageno confirms, “Erdrosselt!” and delivers a comic aside to the audience: “I’ve never been as strong in my life as I am today.”⁸ When Tamino says of the Three Ladies, “I suppose they’re very beautiful,” Papageno insults them, alluding to their veils: “I don’t think so, because if they were beautiful they wouldn’t cover their faces.” The Ladies return in scene 3, and he makes an about-face: “You ask if they’re beautiful, and I can only reply that I never saw anything more charming in my life”; then aside, “There, that should soon calm them down,” reinforcing his duplicity. He is punished as the Ladies deliver a maxim about the importance of truth. While the women are demeaned, it is clearly men who have failed: Tamino arrived with a bow but no arrows (explicit in stage directions) and Papageno lied. Thus, within this vaudevillian context, perhaps we are meant to question male superiority even before we meet the Queen. The dialogue reframes our view of a singularly misogynistic text.

In this scene and others, comedy appears to make palatable the more progressive, as well as the more problematic, aspects of the text. This chapter offers a number of close readings, centering on Monostatos, the Queen, and Sarastro. Each of these characters is given important dialogue that conveys in speech a desire to be understood as more than a stereotype, and each takes grave action when their words are disregarded. By letting them speak, we allow them to transcend their prevailing two-dimensional characterizations to appear as fully formed (and flawed) characters.

Monostatos: “Because I Am the Same Color As a Black Ghost?”

The power of comedic dialogue to engage serious issues lies at the heart of the brief but crucial interaction in Act 1, scene 14, just after we, along with Papageno, meet Monostatos for the first time. The presumptions based on appearance expressed there have a corollary in the spoken exchange of scene 2 when Tamino asks Papageno’s identity and he replies: “A man, like you!” When Papageno asks the same question, Tamino identifies himself by rank: “Then I would answer that I am of princely lineage.” Papageno underscores their class divide: “That’s too high-flown for me.” Tamino presses, “I’m not sure whether you are human.” Papageno’s feathered garb is a visible reason for Tamino’s query (“To judge from those feathers that cover you”); yet it may also signal the folly inherent in judging humans by class and appearance.

That folly is first explicit in song when Papageno and Monostatos are equally startled by each other’s difference and they sing in short comic bursts: “That is the devil there’s no doubt!” (scene 12). The presumption of danger in the Other is treated as ridiculous. In that light, the ensuing spoken words – often cut in modern performances – can be understood as a critique of racist assumptions. Papageno reflects, “Am I not a fool to take fright like that? After all, there are black birds in the world, why shouldn’t there be black men too?” Before judging that line, note that he admits ignorance (confirmed in scene 2, he was unaware of lands and people beyond his own) and realizes that humans can have black skin. While these and other lines have seemed too problematic to stage in contemporary productions, in this case it is not just an analogy to the animal world – which in isolation would certainly be problematic – but a matter-of-fact blackness that suggests the problem is in the perceiver, Papageno, and in white members of the audience, then and now.

The hypocrisy of such censorship could not be more starkly revealed than when compared to US officials in Los Angeles, California, who originated the abhorrent abbreviation NHI – no humans involved – in cases concerning young Black men of low economic status.⁹ The title of Ava DuVernay’s 2019 film, When They See Us, captures a similar perspective: before the trial of the later exonerated teens who were falsely accused and convicted for a brutal 1989 rape, they were dubbed a “wolf pack,” a characterization with roots in the centuries-old branding of non-Europeans as savage.¹⁰ In 2020, while global police brutality was protested at unprecedented levels, American news host Tucker Carlson asked, “Why doesn’t anybody stand up for the rest of us, for civilization?”¹¹ and the French far right embraced the word ensauvagement to stoke fears that immigration would remake France as an uncivilized place.¹²

Relegating racism and misogyny to an uncomfortable past ignores both their persistence today and their resistance in Mozart’s time. In 1772, Diderot called out the cognitive dissonance of claiming Enlightenment while enslaving fellow human beings.¹³ This context informs Monostatos’s speech preceding his strophic aria (Act 2, scene 7). However, his reflections are tainted with sexism – “here I find the cold beauty” – as though because Pamina is beautiful she has no right to her indifference.¹⁴ In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft pinpointed this trap: “I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority.”¹⁵ Monostatos then asks, “But really, what was my crime? … And what man … could remain cold and unfeeling at such a sight?” He seeks the same entitlement as white men regarding nonconsensual acts. The hypocrisy of excising those words is exposed by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s “stop telling women to smile” campaign: “Women have talked to me about how things can jump from a seemingly nice comment to instantly becoming an insult and becoming an assault if the woman doesn’t respond the way the man wants her to.”¹⁶

Monostatos verbalizes that escalation: “That girl will make me lose my senses yet. The fire that smoulders within me can still consume me. If I knew … that I was completely alone and unobserved … I’d risk trying it again.” Blaming the victim for his physical response, the Black overseer is a convenient stand-in for white Europeans such as George Booth, who wrote in a pamphlet of 1739: “If Nature … has given the Fair-Sex stronger Inclinations; it has also given them a natural Modesty and Check upon them, which we [men] have not.”¹⁷ Not only do women censor their desires, but, according to John Burton in 1793, they have a sensor for impropriety: “Modesty is a female Virtue; … Nature herself gives the alarm at any improper conversation or behaviour.”¹⁸ Quaint in retrospect, fallacies concerning female physiology have consequences. And this is still true. Here is US representative Todd Akin (Republican – Missouri) in 2012: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” preventing pregnancy; and in 2016, a judge asked whether the victim had attempted to prevent her assault by “closing her legs.”¹⁹ This book goes to press in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, for which Justice Samuel Alito repeatedly cites seventeenth-century British jurist Matthew Hale to claim an “unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment.” Positioning him as one of the “eminent common-law authorities,” Alito omits Hale’s view of marital rape as exempt from criminal prosecution, of rape in general as “an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent,” and his decisions that were used as precedent for the Salem witch trials. Historian Lauren MacGivor Thompson notes that even for his time Hale “was particularly misogynistic. For a Supreme Court Justice to be [citing him] in 2022 is really astonishing.”²⁰

Parallels between Mozart’s time and ours do not cancel the misogyny of Monostatos’s speech, but cutting his spoken lines worsens matters, as it isolates the racial content of his ensuing aria: “White is beautiful! I must kiss her.” He has just expressed in dialogue the sexist attitude that was spelled out by Booth and Burton, and yet if that gendered justification – with which white males would identify – is cut, then we are left only with the sung text that racializes desire. Without the dialogue, then, it is understandable that many modern productions choose to cut or sanitize the aria, but that reaction may also stem from the extremes with which his character has traditionally been painted.

Monostatos has appeared to be the leering Black male caricatured as “the evil principle, a real monster with splendid white teeth.”²¹ Exaggeration is not the fault of the opera – in which we have noted Papageno’s lesson about white misperceptions of blackness – but of white reactions to the onstage accosting of a white woman by a Black man: “U.S. history is rife with the consequences of widespread White complicity in the propagation of racist stereotypes portraying Black men as beast-like sexual predators, lying in wait to violate White women.”²² The discomfiting persistence of this “danger” narrative underpins whitewashing the character. Thomas Rothschild recognized “an enlightening twist in the libretto when Monostatos complains elsewhere that he should avoid love ‘because a black man is ugly!’ And Papageno argues: ‘There are black birds in the world, why not black people too?’” But Rothschild complicates matters when he continues: “If one does not want to delete these passages of text at the expense of the dramaturgical logic, they fail to completely conceal the black skin of Monostatos. At least in the metaphorical sense, the blackness must be indicated.”²³

This raises an important question: How should Monostatos be represented on stage? Perhaps the perspective gained by a revaluation of the dialogue can inform directorial decisions. One thing is certain: if Monostatos is portrayed true to text, Black singers need to be represented in other roles too.²⁴ Censorship in the name of color blindness is no solution to this problem; I submit that whites are actually color mute. For philosopher Kate Manne, “those who are included in … our ‘common humanity’ are also capable of reducing us to shame when we wrong them. … No wonder then that avoidance – a deliberate attempt to ‘miss’ the other … – is subsequently so common.”²⁵ Shameful performance traditions include blackface and the monkey-like costumes in 2001 for the Paris Opéra. In 2019, for Berlin Opera’s first new production of The Magic Flute in twenty-five years, Yuval Sharon’s characters are marionettes with wide-open whites of the eyes, creating an unintended minstrel effect against Monostatos’s brown skin. Sharon added dialogue that signals present-day virtue around presumably extinguished racism: “There are these critical moments … where they … say … ‘This doesn’t seem right, you don’t tell stories like this today … this must be a very, very old text.’”²⁶ We might see these words as a trope on the work’s moralistic statements; as Martin Nedbal reminds us, “Even from the earliest operatic works … characters turn to the audience to deliver instructional reflections drawn out of onstage occurrences.”²⁷ But Sharon contorts this tradition to distance the present, concluding: “So then it just becomes part of the play, but it’s not a comfortable part of the play.”²⁸

That swerve ignores the role of the dialogue in questioning racist ideas. After the Queen’s climactic revenge aria, the dialogue of Act 2, scene 9, gives Pamina space to reflect: “Must I commit murder? Ye gods, that I cannot do. I cannot! (She remains sunk in thought.)” Monostatos reappears: “Put your trust in me! (He takes the dagger from her. Pamina cries out in fright.)” He does not yet threaten; continuing the racial remonstrance from his aria, he asks, “Why do you tremble? At my black colour, or at the murder that is planned?” Unlike the accusers documented by Ava DuVernay, Pamina does not buy into the danger narrative. To his either/or question – Is it race or your guilty conscience? – she chooses the latter, saying “Then you know?” expressing fear only of what he might disclose. He will reveal the plan to Sarastro unless she “loves” him. Faced with defiance, he returns to race: “No? And why not? Because I am the same color as a black ghost? Is it not so? Ha, then die!”

Without this very uncomfortable dialogue, we miss nuance. While Monostatos condemns rejection based on race, he resorts to physical threat that justifies fear regardless of race. And while Sarastro interrupts the threat to Pamina, he does so with a puzzling reaction to Monostatos: “I understand only too well. I would have you know that your soul is as black as your face. And I would have punished you with the utmost severity for this black crime had not a wicked woman … forged the dagger for it. You may thank the evil behaviour of that woman if you now escape unpunished.” Sarastro creates an intersectional hierarchy: he would have punished the man he has just insulted, but does not; however, without having witnessed the woman’s order, he does judge her harshly enough to exonerate Monostatos, even though he saw Monostatos threaten to kill Pamina. In context, Sarastro’s words to Monostatos are not as harsh as they have sometimes been thought to be.

As he is fleshed out in the dialogue, then, Sarastro is not a benevolent caricature, but just as flawed as the Queen. In fact, the plot device of using speech to interrupt a threat to Pamina is just one point of similarity that connects these two authority figures.

The Queen: “With Your Father’s Death My Power Too Went to the Grave.”

The dialogue preceding the Queen’s iconic aria “Der Hölle Rache” offers an explanation – not an exoneration – of her murderous order and her threat to disown Pamina. Without it, the operagoer might conclude either that the Queen is thoroughly evil or that she inexplicably transforms into a caricature of malevolence after the intermission. Yet her Act 2, scene 8, appearance actually begins as a rescue: according to the stage directions, just as Monostatos “creeps slowly and softly” up to Pamina, the Queen physically shields her daughter by emerging “from the central trap door amid thunder, so that she is standing right in front of Pamina.” While the Queen easily dispatches Monostatos, the ensuing dialogue shows that she is no match for Sarastro’s power.

One word is especially significant in this dialogue: entreißen, which denotes a violent tearing away, but its secondary meaning is to rescue, complicating the way in which both Sarastro and the Queen deal with Pamina. Here is the passage:

Unpacking these words, we see that the transfer of power is complete – Sarastro wears its symbol. The Queen flouts expectations, growing impatient at the offer of treasure, asking instead about the conveyance of power.²⁹ Her request is denied due to a presumed inability to lead; her husband’s negation of female speech (“not a word more”) resonates with John Fordyce’s 1766 claim that only a despicable woman “talks loud[ly], contradicts bluntly, looks sullen … and instead of yielding, challenges submission.”³⁰

This dialogue is not a relic. The speech of today’s female Supreme Court justices is so devalued that they are interrupted three times more frequently than their male counterparts.³¹ When 2016 US presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand questioned Fox News reports on reproductive rights, anchor Chris Wallace scolded, “I’m not sure it’s frankly very polite [of you] when we’ve invited you here.”³² Journalist Yamiche Alcindor probed President Trump’s response to the pandemic in 2020 and he admonished, “Be nice. Don’t be threatening.”³³

This dialogue also clarifies that it is only after learning that Pamina is aligned with those who would destroy her that the Queen calls for Sarastro’s murder. The elements of rescue and the wish to protect Pamina presented in Act 2 are thus consistent with the Second Lady’s dialogue in which she describes the “motherly heart” of the Queen in Act 1 (scene 5). These dialogues challenge a trope of inconsistency so influential that some modern directors present the sympathetic Queen of Act 1 as a skillful deception. For example, in Barrie Kosky’s production she is animated as a spider from the get-go. Perhaps that notion is inspired by Sarastro’s drawing an analogy between prejudice against his men and a spider’s web in the dialogue at the beginning of Act 2, to which we now turn.

Sarastro and the Priests: “That Woman Thinks Herself Great.”

The Queen’s dual loss – her daughter and her claim to power – puts into perspective Sarastro’s words to the Priests at the start of Act 2: “The gods intend the gentle, virtuous maiden Pamina for the gracious youth; that is the main reason why I snatched [entriß] her from her arrogant mother. That woman thinks herself great; she hopes to beguile the people by means of deception and superstition and destroy the firm foundations of our temple. But she must not succeed.” While the rescue aspect of entreißen serves the view that Sarastro saved Pamina from her mother, his dialogue clarifies that he abducted her for Tamino and that the Queen’s ambition is offensive to him. But there is no evidence for the accusation that she is deceptive.³⁴ The refusal to accept a nuanced Queen is linked to today’s “ethical pedestal”: “If voters even perceive that a woman has been dishonest or acted unethically, regardless of her actual actions, the cost is high.”³⁵ The words of a perpetrator of the 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer are a profanity-laced version of Sarastro’s statements: “This tyrant [expletive] loves the power she has right now.”³⁶ During the 2020 US vice presidential debate, then Senator Kamala Harris was characterized by commentator Harlan Hill as “an insufferable power-hungry smug [expletive].”³⁷ It is important to remember Sarastro’s reductive view of the Queen as an “arrogant” woman who “must not succeed,” when, in Act 2, scene 12, Pamina begs him not to punish her mother. He replies, “You will see how I am revenged on your mother.” Without this revelatory dialogue, we might believe the message of his beautiful ensuing aria, “Within these halls we know no vengeance … we forgive our enemies.”

The spoken words provide necessary context for the pageantry of Act 2, scene 1, which is emphasized by its placement at the start of the second act. Mozart himself called this the “solemn scene” in a letter of October 8, 1791, in which he reported that he was so offended by his companion’s laughter at this moment that he “called him a Papageno and cleared out.”³⁸ The Viennese audience often took the work’s moral lessons seriously.³⁹ Yet, could Mozart’s companion have been the only spectator to find humor here? Might it have been provoked by words that seemed pompous and hypocritical? Perhaps we, too, can simultaneously question Sarastro’s judgment against female ambition and admire his humility as a conveyor of a higher power, charging the Speaker to “teach both men by your wisdom what the duty of humanity is; teach them to acknowledge the power of the gods.” He is not a clichéd dominant male, yet his dialogue still begs the question: On what basis does he, like the Queen’s husband, declare that she could not wield power as well as he could?⁴⁰ Tinged with the same arrogance of which he accuses the Queen, Sarastro’s words reveal a flawed human, complicating the serious intent alluded to by Mozart in his letter and for which he wrote such effective music.

The Queen’s explanatory dialogue is often cut, leaving the impression that she is driven solely by a need for control; while, paradoxically, Sarastro’s words are left intact, even though they reveal his controlling nature. In Act 1, scene 5, the First Lady tells Tamino that the Queen “has heard each word” before she asks him to rescue Pamina. But in scene 18 Sarastro presumes to divine Pamina’s thoughts: “For without needing to press you I know more of your heart.” When she does speak, he interrupts to demonstrate his disrespect for her mother (and by extension all women):

This dictum foreshadows the Queen’s rescue dialogue, where her husband insists that she “submit to the guidance of wise men.”

It may be more than coincidence that Sarastro’s words follow the moment where significant text about the hypocrisy of those in power had been penned for Papageno and Pamina at the conclusion of scene 17 (but were cut): “The truth is not always good, Because it harms the great ones.” Nedbal attributes Mozart’s omission of these lines to his wish to support Enlightenment ideals.⁴¹ Conversely, perhaps it was safe to let the Three Ladies question the “falsehoods of these Priests” (Act 2, scene 5) since, as females, they would not be believed. Just before that claim, another outsider, the lower-class Papageno says, “Hey, let’s have lights here! … It’s really strange: every time one of these gentlemen leaves us, however wide you open your eyes, you can’t see a thing.” In the context of the Three Ladies’ speech, we might consider Papageno’s joking style as a comedic literalism that also hints at institutional hypocrisy.

When, in Act 2, scene 3, Tamino confirms that he seeks “friendship and love,” he is asked, “Are you prepared to fight for them with your life?” His affirmation might give us pause, given both his capitulation in the opening scene and his use of Papageno as a surrogate in the first attempt to find Pamina. Those scenes reveal that physical confrontation does not come easily to Tamino. Still, in language reminiscent of the Queen’s husband, Sarastro feeds the masculine power narrative in his culminating scene 21 dialogue: “Prince, your conduct thus far has been manly and calm; now you still have two dangerous paths to tread. If your heart still beats as ardently for Pamina, and if you wish one day to reign as a wise prince, the gods must accompany you further. … Let Pamina be brought in!” Thus, Tamino is twice rewarded: he gets Pamina and the power to govern that was denied the women, although Pamina actually leads him through the final trials. Undervaluing the abilities and contributions of women remains relevant to this day: for example, the gender gap in the sciences is due partly to “women systematically receiving less credit for their work.”⁴²

What I hope to have shown here is that we must let the dialogue speak to us and, just as important, we must speak back – not to judge the eighteenth century but to learn from its contradictions as we continue to learn from our own. As this reading has shown, despite differences in gender, race, and class among the characters of the Queen, Monostatos, and Sarastro, they have in common the wish to be understood. And each conveys that wish most clearly in spoken words. Each also resorts in speech to a grave action when their words are ignored: the Queen orders a murder; Monostatos threatens one; and Sarastro, while keeping his own hands clean, banishes the Queen and excludes her from the benevolence afforded to the rest of humanity.

Conversations around gender, race, and class are essential for musicology to remain relevant, as we will long reckon with the societal tipping point of 2020. For The Magic Flute, a revaluation of the dialogues is a good place to start.

When Mozart sat down to write the finales to The Magic Flute, how did he know what to do?

The question may seem absurd, since we are talking about someone now widely regarded as the greatest opera composer of the eighteenth century, and one of the greatest of all time. Yet, Mozart’s operatic compositions for the previous nine years – since the completion of Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 1782 – had been almost entirely Italian, including, most importantly, the three opere buffe he wrote with Lorenzo Da Ponte: Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. And Die Entführung, though one of Mozart’s greatest successes, was typical of the Singspiel of its day in lacking the extended, multisectional finales that the composer created for The Magic Flute. His one-act Der Schauspieldirektor of 1786, written to represent German opera in a special competition between the Italian and German companies, was more of a play with music and contained a relatively brief finale in a single movement.

Mozart was not the only one focused on Italian opera since 1782. With the abandoning of Emperor Joseph’s National Singspiel project and the reinstallation of an opera buffa company in 1783, the court theaters in Vienna had been producing Italian comic opera almost exclusively for most of the decade. Even after the brief restoration of the German troupe in 1785 and despite the great success of two German works by Dittersdorf, Der Apotheker und der Doktor (1786) and Die Liebe im Narrenhause (1787), opera in German generally took a back seat to opera buffa in Vienna, at least at the imperial theaters (the Burgtheater and the Kärntnertortheater).¹

It was chiefly at commercial suburban theaters in the later 1780s that a popular Singspiel repertory began to develop. In particular, the Theater auf der Wieden, where Emanuel Schikaneder became director in 1789, presented two series of Singspiele with enormous success. One was a set of farces about the “two Antons,” starting in July 1789 with Der dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebürge oder Die zween Anton, and continuing with six more operas about the Antons in the next six years.

Schikaneder’s other series was a succession of fairy-tale operas. It began with Paul Wranitzky’s Oberon in September 1789; continued with a group of collaboratively composed operas, including, most importantly, Der Stein der Weisen oder Die Zauberinsel (September 1790); and led to Schikaneder and Mozart’s The Magic Flute in September 1791 and beyond.² As David Buch and others have shown, Mozart – already a longtime friend of Schikaneder’s – was well acquainted with the operatic activity at the Theater auf der Wieden and in fact composed portions of Der Stein der Weisen, including parts of one of the finales.³

Some, though not all, of the operas in these two series contained the lengthy, multisectional finales that were the hallmark of opera buffa – and that Mozart created for The Magic Flute. And while The Magic Flute finales owe much to the standard model that Mozart drew upon in creating the finales of his Da Ponte operas, they also show features that do not stem from the typical practices of finales in the opera buffa repertory. As we shall see, many of these features can be clearly seen in the finales of Schikaneder’s earlier Singspiele at the Theater auf der Wieden.

In his discussion of The Magic Flute, Hermann Abert claimed that its finales have “absolutely nothing in common with a typical Italian opera buffa finale.”⁴ Yet, in several respects, the two finales of The Magic Flute are not so different from those that Mozart composed for the three Da Ponte operas, which are in turn representative of the finales written for Italian opere buffe in Vienna in the 1780s. On the contrary, the similarities are hard to miss.

To begin with, the finales of The Magic Flute are “chain finales,” meaning that they comprise a succession of ensemble (or, occasionally, solo) sections in a series of tempos, meters, and keys. Mozart’s finales in the Da Ponte operas contain between eight and twelve musical sections and run between 521 and 939 measures, with an average of about 725. In performance they last between sixteen and twenty-four minutes. The Magic Flute finales fit this pattern (they are 586 and 920 measures long, respectively), although the longer Act 2 finale has fifteen musical sections and typically takes twenty-nine or thirty minutes to perform, making it the longest finale Mozart ever composed (see Table 11.1).⁵

Like the Da Ponte opera finales, those of The Magic Flute are musically continuous, never interrupted by passages of simple recitative, and the home keys of their successive sections move away from the initial tonic key of the finale, only to return to the tonic at the end.⁶ Moreover, and again like the finales of opera buffa, the individual movements rely both on passages in which the dramatic action moves forward – typically involving dialogue among the characters onstage – and on expressive passages, in which, for the most part, all characters sing together.⁷ These expressive passages slow the pace of the drama, allowing the characters to reflect on, or express their feelings about, what has just taken place. And they tend to be the moments of greatest musical richness in each section, as multiple voices take over from preceding passages sung mostly in dialogue. A clear example in the Act 2 finale of The Magic Flute is the passage sung by Pamina and the Three Boys in measures 146–82: after they have prevented her suicide and promised to lead her to Tamino, all sing together in praise of “two hearts that burn with love for one another.”

If the structural similarities between The Magic Flute finales and the finales of opera buffa are readily apparent, though, the differences are also highly significant. And nearly all of them can be connected to the new, distinctly different traditions reflected in the German operas being produced by Schikaneder at the Theater auf der Wieden.

In characterizing Der Stein der Weisen as an important model for The Magic Flute and the fairy-tale operas that followed, David Buch listed a number of the work’s stylistic features, the most relevant here being his characterization of its finales. In his words, they were “conceived as a series of contrasting episodes with magic scenes, comic episodes, and tableaus with solemn, ceremonial (feierlich) expression; this structure necessitated a quickly changing mixture of ensembles, solos, recitatives, instrumental music, and choruses.”⁸

To a great extent – and not surprisingly – Buch’s description of the finales of Der Stein der Weisen fits the finales of The Magic Flute as well. We may trace three differences of special interest between Mozart’s finales for The Magic Flute and those for his Da Ponte operas. The differences arise for various reasons, but each connects directly to Buch’s account of the finales of Der Stein der Weisen. One difference is the need for ceremonial, quasi-religious or magical scenes, which are central to the story of The Magic Flute (and others in Schikaneder’s series of fairy-tale operas) but play no part in the more human comedy of opere buffe.⁹ Another is the greater attention to sets and set changes in Schikaneder’s scenically lavish productions. A third is a looser, more episodic approach to the construction of a finale, which corresponds to the more episodic structure of Schikaneder’s libretto for The Magic Flute. In what follows I consider each of these differences in turn.

1. 1. The feierlich (solemn or ceremonial) style was a hallmark of the fairy-tale opera at the Theater auf der Wieden, beginning with Wranitzky’s highly successful Oberon. As in The Magic Flute, it was not limited to finales but employed for formal and ceremonial scenes throughout the operas.¹⁰

Strikingly, many of the feierlich numbers, both in The Magic Flute and in the other fairy-tale operas, are marches. The March of the Priests that opens Act 2 of The Magic Flute is one such example, as are the two marchlike numbers for the Three Boys that begin each of The Magic Flute’s finales. These three pieces share a cut-time time signature, a tempo of andante or larghetto, a reliance on dotted rhythms (a bit less so in the March of the Priests), and a sense of nobility and gravity. While they are otherwise scored quite differently, two of the three pieces employ trombones – as does another conspicuously feierlich piece, Sarastro’s aria “O Isis und Osiris.”¹¹

Beyond the two marches that begin The Magic Flute’s finales, there are also other references to the feierlich style in each finale. In the Act 1 finale, three short passages occur at the end of the lengthy scene between Tamino and the Priest (mm. 137–39, 143–45, and 149–51). As Tamino asks three questions about when Enlightenment will reach him and whether Pamina is still alive, he is answered – first by the Priest, and in the second and third passages by an offstage chorus of Priests – by the same grave, solemn, marchlike phrase in A minor, in an andante tempo with dotted rhythms. (Here, as in so many other places in the opera, the use of a three-fold repetition is symbolic rather than incidental.)¹²

The feierlich style is even more prominent in the Act 2 finale. In addition to the opening march for the Three Boys, there is the impressive passage in which the two Armored Men sing a chorale melody (this passage is discussed further below); there are the two flute solos with which Tamino and Pamina brave the trials of fire and water – though perhaps a bit more cheerful and lively than some of the other feierlich scenes, these passages still rely on the same dotted rhythms and march topos – and the closing chorus of the opera, which begins with a grand Andante march of praise (mm. 828–45) before giving way to the final celebratory Allegro.

1. 2. Schikaneder’s operatic productions of German opera at the Theater auf der Wieden, as John Rice and others have noted, were considerably more lavish than productions at the Burgtheater, where “scenery was not a high priority for Emperor Joseph II and his theater director Rosenberg.”¹³ For example, Rice showed that Da Ponte’s libretto for Don Giovanni calls for nine sets during the work’s two acts, two of them reused in each act, so that seven different sets in all would have been needed. (While Don Giovanni was originally conceived for the Nostitz Theater in Prague, the settings remained the same for the 1788 production at the Burgtheater.) By contrast, The Magic Flute libretto calls for thirteen sets, no fewer than nine of them in the second act alone (with only one of those reused, so that eight different sets – one more than in Don Giovanni – would have been employed in the act).¹⁴ More generally, Buch notes that “Schikaneder’s librettos for the theater [auf der Wieden] specify a mechanical stage with three trap doors, movable flats and backdrops, and devices to accommodate flying machines, storms, sea battles, and similar effects.”¹⁵

The relative economy of set changes in the Da Ponte operas is notable in their finales, all but one of which use a single set throughout. Only in the Act 1 finale of Don Giovanni is there a change, from the garden outside Don Giovanni’s palace to a great hall within. But while the first finale of The Magic Flute occurs entirely in a single location – the grove with three temples in which Tamino first learns of Sarastro’s brotherhood – the second finale uses four distinct scenes (see Table 11.1). The first and third of these are the same “short garden” – that is, a garden scene that uses only the front portion of the stage, so that stagehands can work behind a cloth backdrop to prepare the full-stage set that will be used next.¹⁶ In the first garden scene, the Three Boys confront and comfort Pamina; in the later one, Papageno contemplates suicide, is reminded by the Boys to use his magic bells to summon Papagena, and is blissfully reunited with her. The same set remains for the subsequent section in which the Queen of the Night and her retinue reappear, bent on revenge. (While some modern scores indicate, and some productions employ, a change of scene for the Queen’s entrance, it is quite clear in the original libretto that no change of scene occurs.)

These two short-set episodes permitted the preparation of the two impressive full-stage sets. The first contains “two great mountains,” one with a waterfall, the other with a fire burning; this is of course the setting for the two trials that Tamino and Pamina must endure. In the second full-stage scene, which appears only for the final moments of the opera, “the entire theater is transformed into a sun,” as the Queen and her entourage sink down into the floor, and Sarastro and his followers celebrate the courage and virtue of Tamino and Pamina.

1. 3. It is in their episodic nature that Mozart’s Magic Flute finales most clearly diverge from the model of the opera buffa finale, one of whose hallmarks is dramatic continuity. In an opera buffa, a finale follows a set of characters through a single sequence of connected plot events. A clear example is the Act 1 finale of Così fan tutte, in which the pretended suicide attempt by the two male lovers sets up the series of comic scenes that follows, with all six characters involved. Dramatic continuity is maintained in all of the Da Ponte opera finales by the presence throughout of some of the central characters, while others may come and go.

The sense of an episodic finale, on the other hand – what Abert described as “a lively array of scenes … loosely held together by the thread of the plot”¹⁷ – arises from points at which all the characters on stage exit, to be replaced by others involved in another aspect of the story, giving a sense of “meanwhile …” It can be heightened by a set change, which strengthens the separation between two successive scenes.

Only once does either of these devices occur in any of the Da Ponte opera finales. Both instances take place in the Act 1 finale of Don Giovanni, whose main focus is Giovanni’s attempt to seduce Zerlina during the festivities to which he has invited her wedding party. As mentioned above, the finale begins in Don Giovanni’s garden. After Giovanni leads his guests inside (i.e., offstage), the trio of Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and Don Ottavio appear in the garden, bent on confronting him. At Don Giovanni’s order, Leporello calls to them from the window to invite them inside. As the scene changes to the “illuminated room” in the palace, they join the rest of the characters for the remainder of the finale.

The moment of the three maskers’ entrance does create the feeling of a separate episode (which, as I have said, is atypical of an opera buffa finale). However, the end of the scene has the opposite effect: when the set changes to the interior of Don Giovanni’s palace and the three masked figures join Don Giovanni’s party, they converge back into the main dramatic flow of the finale. The set change does not further contribute to an episodic feeling; on the contrary, it emphasizes the convergence.

A similar succession of events – a complete change of characters, followed by a convergence – occurs once in the Act 1 finale of The Magic Flute: Tamino, aided by the Three Boys, searches for Pamina. After his lengthy conversation with the Priest – seen by many scholars as the central “conversion moment” of the opera – he plays his flute, leading to a musical exchange between the flute and Papageno’s pipes. Tamino rushes off to find Papageno, hoping to find Pamina as well, just as they enter in search of him. After the subsequent scene with Monostatos and his Slaves, Pamina and Papageno are discovered by Sarastro and his brotherhood; they are then joined by Monostatos, who brings with him the captured Tamino, thus uniting all the characters for the closing portion of the finale.

It is in the Act 2 finale of The Magic Flute that the episodic, “meanwhile …” nature of the Singspiel finale described by Buch and Abert can be seen most clearly: there are no fewer than five phases of action with different groups of characters onstage – that is, when one entire group of characters exits and another enters. (Again, and as we have seen, such a wholesale change occurs only once in any of Mozart’s Da Ponte opera finales.) And the use of multiple stage sets heightens the sense of separation between these parts of the finale.

As mentioned above, finale 2 opens in a “short garden” in which the Three Boys discuss Pamina’s plight and then comfort her, promising to guide her to Tamino (see sections 1–2 in Table 11.1). What follows is something never found in any of Mozart’s opera buffa finales: a complete change of scene, characters, and mood. As Pamina and the Three Boys exit, the set changes to the two mountains. The new episode begins with an utterly different feeling: the two Armored Men escort Tamino and sing a solemn prophecy about his path to Enlightenment – a brilliant, feierlich evocation of a Bachian chorale prelude and one of the most stunning musical moments in the finale, if not the entire opera.¹⁸ Tamino is soon joined by Pamina, and he plays the flute as the couple brave the trials of fire and water; at the conclusion of the trials, their triumph is confirmed by an offstage chorus (sections 3–7).

What follows is the most clearly self-contained episode of the finale, marked by a set change back to the garden: Papageno’s scene in which his attempt at suicide is prevented by the Three Boys, leading to his reunion with Papagena (sections 8–12). The story arc of the bird-couple concludes there, and they have no further role in the events of the opera; there is no reunion of master and sidekick as one might have expected for Tamino and Papageno. A number of stage directors address this absence by putting Papageno and his bride onstage for the final scene, even though the libretto does not mention them and Mozart gives them no music to sing.

Yet another complete change of characters follows, but no change of scene (despite, as mentioned earlier, what one sees in a number of modern productions): as the happy Papageno and Papagena exit, Monostatos and the Queen of the Night, with her Three Ladies, enter the same garden, planning to attack Sarastro’s brotherhood (section 13). And finally, as the plotters are overthrown and sink into the earth, a last set change “transforms the entire theater into a sun” and reveals Sarastro and the Chorus, who hail the gods Isis and Osiris and the triumph of courage and wisdom (sections 13–15).

Interestingly, the original libretto suggests that Schikaneder and Mozart wanted to minimize the sense of episodic separation at this moment, and visibly juxtapose the downfall of the Queen with the triumph of Enlightenment. The libretto’s stage directions clearly indicate that the transformation scene, which must have been spectacular, occurs before the final lines for Monostatos and the Queen, “Zerschmettert, zernichtet ist unsere Macht, / Wir alle gestürzet in ewige Nacht” (Our power is broken and destroyed, / We are plunged into eternal night). These lines would thus have been sung as a despairing, defeated response to the blazing light of the sun; and Sarastro, Tamino, and Pamina would have witnessed the disappearance of the plotters.¹⁹

Perhaps the most striking feature contributing to the episodic nature of The Magic Flute finales is the sharp changes in musical style that heighten the sense of separation from one section to the next. Examples of such stark changes are many, and we may point to just a few as examples. In the Act 1 finale, the conclusion of Tamino’s scene with the Priest leads to his playing his flute and hearing Papageno’s pipes in reply. In the final brief Presto of the scene (mm. 212–25) he sings excitedly of the possibility of finding Pamina, yet his vocal line is elegant and noble, shaped around expressive high notes. Moments later, with Pamina and Papageno’s “Schnelle Füße, rascher Mut,” the music changes to a playful, patter-driven style with a completely different character.

In the Act 2 finale, we have already seen several dramatic changes in style and mood, such as the C-minor music of the two Armored Men (beginning in m. 190) that follows Pamina’s happy, lyrical quartet with the Three Boys. Another is the entrance – also in C minor – of the Queen of the Night and her plotters, hard on the heels of the silly and delightful music of Papageno and Papagena’s reunion (mm. 745ff.).

But even within what is ostensibly a single musical section, Mozart often creates a sharply varied series of musical styles. The opening ninety-three measures of the Act 2 finale vividly illustrate the composer’s flexibility, and the sense of separate episodes that results.

As already noted, the finale opens in feierlich style, with the Three Boys foretelling an end to superstition and the return of a glorious day of wisdom; they sing homophonically to a noble andante march (mm. 1–28). Yet as soon as they see Pamina, the style changes to a livelier feeling, animated by an “oom-pah” string accompaniment (beginning in m. 30). This agitato accompaniment and the rapid dialogue among the Boys might almost make the passage sound comical, were it not for the turn to C minor and the chromatic stepwise lines of measures 36–37 and 43. As the Boys’ confrontation with Pamina continues, Mozart freely shifts among styles: the pulsating accompaniment and chattering dialogue; several moments of elevated tragedy for Pamina, culminating in the moment of her suicide attempt at measures 84–91; and serene, feierlich beauty, as when the Boys call out to Pamina at measures 63–66. The effect within this one short scene is almost kaleidoscopic, as Mozart emphasizes an instant responsiveness to every momentary phase of the drama over stylistic consistency and continuity. And it is surely this degree of stylistic variety within a section, as well as the even starker stylistic changes between sections described above, that accounts for the perception of Mozart’s Magic Flute finales as episodic.

In the end, of course, it is no surprise that Mozart’s finales for The Magic Flute reflect the influences both of the opera buffa, of which he was such a master, and of the fairy-tale German operas his friend and collaborator Schikaneder was producing with great success at the Theater auf der Wieden. At the level of overall structure, the model of the opera buffa finale prevailed – as, indeed, it did in the finales of the other Viennese German operas of the decade, from Dittersdorf’s Der Doktor to Wranitzky’s Oberon and the collaborative Der Stein der Weisen. There is no reason to doubt, in fact, that the chain-finale model was simply borrowed from opera buffa by composers of German opera, a familiar set of procedures easily adaptable to their own, somewhat different, needs. As to character and style, on the other hand, we can recognize in The Magic Flute finales the same episodic feeling and the same mixture of widely differing elements that pervade the opera as a whole: the feierlich and the farcical, the grandeur of Sarastro’s prayer to Isis and Osiris and the captivating silliness of the bird-couple’s stuttering happiness in “Pa-Pa-Pa.”

By comparison with the finales of The Magic Flute, those of Der Stein der Weisen and the other German operas performed in Vienna during Mozart’s last few years seem a bit ordinary. Or, to put it the other way around, in comparison to the finales of these works, those of The Magic Flute sparkle with life. Yet, this difference lies not in a different approach or a different set of procedures but in the fact that Mozart’s ability to animate each character and characterize each moment is unmatched. When Pamina laments, for instance – whether at length in her devastating Act 2 aria, “Ach ich fühl’s,” or more briefly in her contemplation of suicide in the finale to Act 2 – her sadness is gripping to a degree that the grief of the lovers Nadir and Nadine in Der Stein der Weisen cannot reach. Similarly, the humorous scenes for Lubano (the Papageno character) in the same opera are charming, but they are never as funny or as touching as those for Papageno himself. As in so many other musical genres, Mozart outdistanced his contemporaries not by the uniqueness of his approach but by the brilliance of his dramatic instincts and musical invention.