DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE
La Flauta Mágica
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartA Singspiel in two acts
Libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder
Three chords for a new world
The number three is fundamental
in this German opera, which plumbs the depths but has a simple
plot. It was written for a Viennese theatre with a popular
audience, in the language of the German people rather than the
Italian of the court theatre. The struggle between good and evil,
embodied in the struggle between the Night and the Sun by the
daughter of both, virtue in the guise of Pamina, is settled between
the forces of fertile nature and reason, which support the Sun, and
the dark recesses of the soul and infernal caves, which support the
Night. It is a pureblood prince in love who decides the supremacy
of light over darkness and of reason over superstition. Although it
is an opera from the Age of Enlightenment, the tide of romanticism
and revolution can be discerned.