Unfinished portrait (J. Lange, 1789)
Unfinished portrait (J. Lange, 1789) |
1. Do the first and second acts fit together?
The first night of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, on September 30, 1791, was not an unqualified success. To be sure, the public found the music magnificent, but Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto immediately came under fire of the critics, and so is it until this day. Obviously the screenplay was no good, although Eckermann noted what Goethe said, namely, that "the initiated would not fail to detect the deeper sense." The principal line of attack is that the first and second acts are not linked up with each other. In the first act the `queen of the night’ is the sorrowful mother and Sarastro a despicable tyrant; in the second act the queen has become a fury intending to kill and Sarastro is the noble high priest now. Many solutions has been devised to explain this discrepancy, the one still more ingenious than the other. To quote only one: discontented with Schikaneder’s first act, Mozart would have written the second act to his own mind, which would explain the anomalies. I do not intend to add the umpteenth solution to this problem; instead. I will go through the screenplay as open-mindedly as possible. In this I am helped by the fact that I have heard many recorded performances, with the great advantage that, listening to the stereo player, one can follow the screenplay word for word. I start from the premiss that it was Schikaneder who wrote the whole play, as long as the opposite does not become apparent.
We should not exclude beforehand that there is an opposition indeed between Act I and Act II, but I believe, nevertheless, that a large part of the problem is the way Tamino views the occurrences, which is mostly overlooked. One of the elements of the play is Tamino’s conversion. Initially he does not make a great impression. His very first words are `help, help!, because he is afraid of the monstrous snake; the animal is killed by the three ladies, while he himself is lying unconscious. Next he falls desperately in love with Pamina, this only at the sight of her portrait, handed to him by the three ladies. Hearing that the `bad demon’ Sarastro has wrested her from the power of her mother, the queen of the night, he is immediately ready to save the girl from the tyrant’s claws.
He believes all that he is told to believe, which is a sign that he still is only an ordinary mortal. Only later, when, under the guidance of the wisdom priests, he has stood the tests and thus acquired true insight, he becomes more steadfast; it is then that the queen of the night lets fall her mask. It is remarkable that, when Sarastro appears in the first act as the leader of the initiation, he is not a `bad demon’, but is received with all due marks of reverence, by the priestly chorus, by Pamina, by Monostatos, who is punished by the high priest for his misbehaviour towards Pamina, and finally also by Tamino himself. He has then already, that is, in the first act, learned that he should not believe the idle stories of a woman.
A second element is that the queen of the night has some occasion indeed to be angry with Sarastro. It is a fact that the high priest has kidnapped her daughter Pamina, that is, he has unlawfully removed her from parental control. And why? Because – as he states literally – he wants to give her in marriage to Tamino. The curious thing is that the queen intends to do exactly the same. Pamina’s portrait is handed to Tamino in her name; shortly afterwards the queen promises him her daughter’s hand, if he can liberate her and return her to her mother. The only reason why Sarastro acts as a marriage broker is that he finds the queen unfit as a pedagogue, and this only because she is a woman. "A man must guide your hearts, for without him every woman threatens to go beyond her own sphere of action", a motive that today is still less convincing than it was in Mozart’s time.
 Mozart's `child violin' |
The queen has yet another grievance (Act I, Scene 13). Sarastro wears on his breast the `sevenfold sun wreath’; the queen’s deceased husband gave this ornament – whatever it may be, we are not informed – to the priest, and the widow wants to have it returned to her. Attention should also be paid to the fact that the unpleasant Monostatos, who lusts after Pamina, is originally a servant of Sarastro and guards the imprisoned girl at his orders. Later, when Sarastro surprises Monostatos during his second attempt to harass Pamina, he lets him go unpunished. One would rather expect to find this man in the queen’s retinue; it is perhaps one of the contradictions of the play that this is not the case. Only at the end, during the attempt to destroy the temple, he has taken the side of the queen.
Next it may not escape our attention that the magic flute and the magical Glockenspiel are presents of the queen. Pamina’s father cut the flute from the wood of a thousand years old oak – a charming Germanic-romantic detail! -, but has apparently left the instrument to his widow. The first lady hands the flute to Tamino in her name, promising that the instrument will help him even in the greatest distress; after this she gives Papageno the `silver bell’ with the same promise. Still in the first act Tamino finds both Papageno and Pamina with the help of the tunes of the flute, to which Papageno responds musically, not with his bell, however, with his own flute (this means that we have to do with two flutes!). The role of the instruments become decisive in Act II, even if they come from the hostile camp. During the arduous water and fire test playing the flute leads Tamino and Pamina through the ordeal. "We go happily through death’s dark night with the power of the tunes." When in the nick of time Papageno avoids committing suicide, he plays the bells which immediately bring him to Papagena. "Play, bells, play! Bring my girl to me!"
Let me venture a short conclusion. The play has, at the background (not easily detectable, it is true), a pattern of unity. The queen’s husband – a sun god? - and Sarastro were acquainted with one another and were on good terms. After his death the high priest assumes, against het mother’s wishes, the girl’s education, because he puts no trust in female guidance. From this point on the opposition between him and the queen become ever more marked, until she even wants kill the priest or has him killed. We have for this the great authority of Alfred Einstein who wrote in his important Mozart biography that he could not find a scrap of evidence that Schikaneder would have changed, in the middle of his screenplay, the plot and the characters. "It is impossible, in the construction of the two acts and of the opera as a whole, to take away a stone and replace it somewhere else."
2. Zauberspuk or a `philosophical opera’?
With this problem more or less behind us, we can now concentrate on another famous problem, that of the opera’s significance. One sees the commentators hesitating between Zauberspuk and `philosophical opera’. At first sight it seems to be an `Egyptian’ opera, what with the high protection of the Egyptian godheads Isis and Osiris. The first edition showed a picture of a pyramid and hieroglyphs, according to stage directions in the text which mention a pyramid and hieroglyphs and even `Old-Egyptian’ doors. However, this pair of gods is the only one Egyptian element in the opera, appearing no more than four times (of which once in Sarastro’s great bass aria, `O, Isis und Osiris’, and further only very shortly). The Old-Egyptian set-up is, therefore, very meagre.
What did one know about 1790 of the Egypt of the Pharaohs? Hardly more that what Herodotus relates; the hieroglyphs were not yet deciphered. The most curious error is that Isis and Osiris are consequently presented as gods of wisdom, the protecting deities of the temple of wisdom. In ancient Egyptian mythology they were not known as such (the god of wisdom was Toth), but as gods of fertility and life, of death and resurrection. Unconsciously (I suppose), the publisher gave our gaze another direction by also adding a five-pointed star to the picture. This is not an Egyptian symbol, but has quite another origin.
 Mozart's piano. Already as a child he was a virtuoso. |
A second explanation is that The Magic Flute is a freemasons’ opera; on the title page of the first edition a set-square and a trowel figure, symbols of the Lodge, are pictured. Several elements, inaccessible to an outsider, are thought to point to this. The opera begins and ends in E flat major, which, according to Einstein, is the `freemasons’ key’ (but why?); the woodwinds who can be heard often, are supposed to be a reflection of the wind music in the Viennese buildings of the Lodge. The three chords with which the overture strikes up are thought to correspond with the three knocks on the door of a masonic temple. And indeed, Mozart and Schikander were members of the Lodge, the librettist with somewhat more enthusiasm than the composer; perhaps they liked to play with masonic elements, but to us, who are almost unable to detect them, this is no more than child’s play.
What is more important is the label `philosophical opera’. Neither of its two authors was a philosopher or a deep thinker, but we find in the opera some thoughts which are typical for the period of the Enlightenment. There is talk of virtue and justice; there is a predilection for the idea of `humanity’; superstition must disappear, together with all prejudices; friendship and love of mankind are held in high esteem. The distinctive word is spoken by Sarastro, who, to the objection of a priest that Tamino is a prince, answers: Noch mehr, er ist Mensch!
The most impossible attempts were made to lay bare the deeper backdrops of the opera, either along the road of allegorical explanation or by means of discovering a (then) actual political context. The most plausible is that the Queen of the Night would be the Empress Maria Theresia whom Mozart disliked intensely. If this is correct, then Monostatos must stand for a historic person, but who? Thus we are back in the mystery.
 The house where Mozart was born om January 27, 1756, Gertreidegasse 9, Salzburg. The family lived on the third floor. Wolfgang lived here from 1756 to 1773. |
Nevertheless, the idea that there is a mysterious element in the libretto seems justified, although one may easily be on the wrong track during his or her quest. The first publisher must have had a surmise of this, as appears from the five-pointed star on cover, a symbol which does not occur at all in the opera. The five-pointed star is a well-known sign of closed, esoteric associations (for the moment it does not matter what it means and how it originated). We find it in use for the first time in the Pythagorean fraternities of South Italy in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.; these were closed associations with ideals which resemble those proclaimed in the opera. It seems correct that our attention is directed towards the Greek world.
3. Numerology
Let the numerology put us on the right track. It will strike everyone that the number `three’ is used excessively oft. Of all sacred numbers this is the most sacred, either because it expresses the three phases of the moon, or because it pictures the holy trinity father-mother-child. There are three priests, three ladies, three young lads, three chords in the beginning, which later are repeated, for instance, when Sarastro appears, three gates in the temple of wisdom, three visits of the boys to Papageno, Papageno counting to three before he is going to hang himself, Tamino who must fulfil three conditions (virtuous, silent, beneficent) and walk three `dangerous ways’, there is really no end of it.
I mentioned the number `seven’ already with regard to the sevenfold sun wreath; this number also appears in the seventy-seven strokes dealt to Monostatos. Once the number `four’ appears, the Pythagorean number par excellence, namely, in the four elements. Tamino and Pamina will be put to the test by each of the elements. Actually, they have only to pass through water and fire; perhaps ordeals by earth and air would pose too many problems of a practical kind to the stage machinery of Schikaneder’s Theater auf den Wieden, for which the opera was written.
Next there is the number `two’, also a special Pythagorean number, forming part of the famous tetraktys, the series of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 (added up= 10, the number of fullness); it can be written as a triangle:
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There are many pairs in the opera, the mysterious two `harnassed men’, the couples Tamino and Pamina, Papageno and Papagena, but also in other connections, the Queen and her daughter, Tamino and Papageno, Papageno and Pamina.
The mutual relations of the dramatis personae, as far as they are connected with the temple, are expressed by first syllables, which resemble each other: Sa-, Ta- and Pa-; those who really take part in the initiation each have three syllables: Sarastro, Tamino, and Pamina. There are also two solitary persons, Sarastro, who, as the high priest, has no equal, and Monostatos, whose name signifies (in Greek!) `standing alone’; as the bad one he remains alone, until the revengeful Queen takes him under her protection. He and Papageno are kindred spirits in one respect: they are fond of female beauty. I am not saying at all that Schikaneder introduced elements like the tetraktys consciously. Esoteric elements are hard to kill, even if one has no idea of provenance or origin. Do we think of Pythagoras, when we tell someone `squarely’ what we think of him or her, or when we make a `square deal’?
 The room where Mozart was born. |
4. The Greek background
We have arrived in Greece now and we will stay there. The temple of wisdom makes us think not so much of Egypt but rather of Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi, for this was a place indeed from where wisdom was spread over Greeks and barbarians. The first reference to Delphi is that sevenfold sun wreath worn by Sarastro, for Apollo figures in Delphi as a sun god. The very first scene directs us also to Delphi, when the three ladies, on behalf of Tamino, kill a snake. In the perspective of the history of religions Apollo is a latecomer in Delphi; he has suppressed there a much older cult of a chthonic god; this is symbolized in the myth by his killing a big snake (the snake is a chthonic animal par excellence, for it creeps over the earth in its full length). The snake’s name, the python, lives on in that of Apollo’s prophetess, the Pythia.
We penetrate still deeper into Greek mythology, when we hear Tamino attempt to play the magic flute for the first time: all kinds of animals appear and listen tranquilly to the melody. This remembers us of Orpheus, the legendary musician, who subdues all animals, wild and tame, with his flute. Another curious proof of controlling wild animals is that Sarastro comes onto the stage in a chariot drawn by six lions (sic). It should be remarked, though, that the antique Orpheus did not play the flute, but the lyre, which was the restful instrument in the opinion of the Greeks, whereas the flute, with its shrill tones, was considered to be inciting. The function of the flute in this opera is, in consequence, an anomaly, from the viewpoint of cultural history.
It is, therefore, an interesting question why Mozart gave such a decisive role to the flute, so that the whole opera has its name from this instrument. He had no great love for the flute; he wrote only four more compositions for flute, four quartets, probably grudgingly written, ordered by the Dutchman De Jean, who was not satisfied with them (the last one, KV 298, is even a parody). Could it be that the use of the flute in this opera is a sign, an unconscious sign, that Mozart did not feel at ease with the libretto, in so far as this is a mystery play (for it has also another side)?
Let us penetrate still deeper into the mysteries. Tamino will be initiated. Already his initial situation is pointing to this. He has left everything behind him, his land and his normal existence as a prince; he is entirely thrown back upon himself. Papageno does not even know that there are other countries and peoples. Tamino is, therefore, in the situation that is appropriate for one who will be initiated, a situation of anxiety and uncertainty (the first thing he does is fainting, the intermediate stage between his old and his new life). This new life is not simply thrown into his lap; it is preceded not only by great solemnities, but also by severe tests. The initiation is presided over by Sarastro, whose function, seen in the perspective of the history of religions, is that of a hierophant, the high priest of the mystery religions. Sarastro’s name is not Greek; it rather remembers one of Zoroaster, Zarathustra.
It is night when Tamino and Pamina arrive in the forecourt of the temple. This makes us think of the Eleusinian mysteries; the initiation of the novices in the secrets also took place in the night, in the enormous dark hall of the telesterion, the mystery building at Eleusis. Other elements reinforce this impression. The couple is told to remain strictly silent, just like the persons who would be initiated in Eleusis: they had to remain utterly silent abou all that they had experienced in the hall. There is also the loud thunderstorm that accompanies the solemnity and that almost give Papageno a fit; in the telesterion a kind of son et lumière was performed, of which we do not know exactly what it was, but that in any case made a deep impression on the initiates. Those in Eleusis had to fast and to be shockproof against anxiety and fear. There can be no doubt that the cultural background of this part of the opera is the mystery cult of Eleusis.
 The kitchen of the Mozart house. |
Yet the differences between the opera and Greek mythology are also great and important. Schikaneder and Mozart can impossibly have had the intention to give new life to an ancient Greek mystery cult. From where would they have had their knowledge? Although the libretto is a curious mixture of Egyptian, Greek (and Iranian) elements, it is evident that the two possessed some knowledge of these things. School cannot have been the source. Schikaneder was a very simple man, who has hardly ever seen a schoolroom and who erred about as a musician already at a very early age. And Mozart too who, since he was five, was constantly travelling, did not have much of an education. However, at the end of the eighteenth century classical lore was still in the air; it suffused general culture far more than is the case today.
5. Love stories
What is alien to the mystery cult are the three love stories: Tamino-Pamina, Papageno-Papagena, and … Monostatos-Pamina. Yet what is still more important from the viewpoint of the history of culture is that what is achieved in Eleusis is the triumph over death, whereas that what Tamino and Pamina wish and what is promised them is wisdom: O Isis und Osiris, schenket der Weisheit Preis dem neuen Paar, give the new couple the prize of wisdom. This shift seems characteristic to me for the period of the Enlightenment.
There are in this opera, to use a Proustian term, two côtés, the côté-Sarastro and the côté-Papageno. And this is the real (and essential) opposition the opera, not that between the Queen and Sarastro. The second act is brimful of indications that Papageno does not want to have anything to do with the Zauberspuk; he is deadly afraid of it and does not feel any desire to be initiated and to sustain the tests which precede it. It seems that Mozart identified himself with Papageno to a certain extent. What the bird-catcher says of himself also refers to the composer: "… weiss mit dem Locken umzugehn und mich aufs Pfeifen zu verstehn. Drum kann ich froh und lustig sein, denn alle Vögel sind ja mein", … know how to deal with luring and am expert in whistling. Therefore, I can be gay and merry, for all birds are mine, Papageno’s great aria, which Mozart let be sung to him, when he lay on his deathbed. Papageno dubs himself `so ein Naturmensch’. When the priests tell him that he never will enjoy `das himmlische Vergnügen der Eingeweihten’, the heavenly delight of the initiated, he laconically retorts, so what? there are more of this ilk. This is the other coté, that of simple people who are content with very simple things, people who do not need to be initiated, because they have no problems and understand life as it is.
Papageno’s true fulfilment of life is a woman. "O so ein sanftes Täubchen wär’ Seligkeit für mich!", such a soft dove would be bliss for me. However, he does not desire her with brute sensuality, like Monostatos, but wishes to have a decent marital bond with Papagena. Here the scene has a biblical background. "It is not good for man to remain alone". "Helf eine mir nur aus der Not, sonst gräm ich mich wahrlich zu Tod", let someone (a girl) save me from this emergency; or else I shall fret myself to death. Hence his attempt at suicide. "Then the man said, this one is at last bone from my bone, flesh from my flesh; she shall be called Wo-man." And so Papageno recognizes his wife as `a help who is like he himself’, in the famous scene in which they stammering speak each other’s names, Pa-pa-pa-geno, Pa-Pa-Pa-gena, a far closer union - in a more simple life – than that of Tamino-Pamina. "Be fertile and increase", so liebe kleine Kinderlein, such dear little children: first a little Papageno, then a little Papagena, then …
The simple history of Papageno – and of Papagena – runs through the whole libretto from beginning to end, as counterpart to the mystery play. This story also constitutes the fundamental unity of the opera: both in the first and in the second act Papageno remains entirely true to himself. But the two cotés do not come together. The Sarastro part ends with the celebration of beauty and wisdom, the Papageno part with a song of praise on marital bliss and having children. And thus, at the end, both parties go their own way.
 Relief (L. Posch, 1789) |