In 1789, they staged a performance of Karl Ludwig Giesecke’s Oberon, a Singspiel that inspired many of the characters and plot turns in The Magic Flute.

Is The Magic Flute a fairy story, then, a jumble of loosely-Masonic allegories that changed direction half way through, or is it a tightly constructed plot whose twists and ambiguities all serve a unified, higher purpose? A partial answer emerges in the backstory of Schikaneder’s troupe, which had been performing “fairy-tale operas” for several years before The Magic Flute. The staging of The Magic Flute is notoriously difficult without making it look either farcical (overlooking the serious elements) or Wagnerian (overlooking the humor and wit). Added to this, there is the element of pantomime, the blend of comic and serious, and rapid scene changes (though one can find that in Shakespeare as well). Now follows a padlock, a magic flute, a magic glockenspiel and five singers who step out of character to talk directly to the audience.” And the heroine hasn’t even made her entrance yet! It’s no wonder audiences are confused. “An overture, then a dragon,” he notes, “three ‘cabaret’ ladies, a quasi-folk song, an intensely passionate invocation to a portrait, and a virtuoso tirade. The opera conductor and part-time Mozart scholar Myer Fredman once remarked on how oddly the plot of The Magic Flute unfolds. Unraveling the plot of The Magic Flute appears to have generated more scholarly research than the music has, as scholars and fans alike try to account for its eccentricities. But if Wagner was thinking about The Magic Flute, then he had a point. One of the only criticisms Richard Wagner had of Mozart was that he was willing to set low quality libretti to high quality music (and if that was the worst thing Wagner could say about Mozart, then it was high praise). It is truly a head-scratcher from almost any viewpoint. Neither is it a comedy, though there are comic moments. And it’s not the complexity of human relationships that swirl around a basic dramatic premise like “love” (as in The Marriage of Figaro) or morality and politics (as in Don Giovanni). The plot of The Magic Flute is undeniably complicated. The Magic FluteThe Story and Backstory of writing The Magic Flute

La opera the magic flute