Die Zauberflöte

Prince Tamino is on a quest to rescue the beautiful Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, who has been kidnapped by the High Priest Sarastro. Helped by the bird-catcher Papageno, he finds her, but also finds himself drawn to Sarastro’s mysterious brotherhood. Can the couple conquer their fears and join them? Premiered just months before Mozart’s death, Die Zauberflöte (1791) represents a new departure for the composer: His last opera to be staged was also his first for a commercial opera house. With its broad audience and emphasis on popular appeal, Emanuel Schikaneder’s Theatre auf der Wieden on the outskirts of Vienna demanded a different style of opera. Mozart responded with a singspiel (“sung play”) that combines a fairytale setting and pantomime comedy with a plot that’s as much an allegory as an adventure, raising serious questions about power, religion and the nature of truth and duty. The score fizzes with charm and invention. While the harmonic language is simpler than the Da Ponte operas, the range of musical styles and colours is broader than ever, encompassing the folk simplicity of Papageno’s music (“Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen”), the expansive emotional—and vocal—range of the Queen of the Night (at its most extreme in her famous aria “Der Hölle Rache”), and the ceremonial splendour of Sarastro and his followers (“O Isis und Osiris”).