Almost halfway through Die Zauberflöte, you’d end up wondering why would The Speaker even bother inviting Tamino (Araiza) to the temple. Tamino doesn’t understand either the reason why Sarastro (Kurt Moll) would keep Pamina (Lucia Popp) away from her mother, the Queen of the Night (Gruberova). In a nutshell, it highlighted one of the attributes often credited to the Freemasons = secrecy. The kind of secrecy that is only broken once you join the brotherhood.
This is Die Zauberflöte, perhaps Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s most famous opera that once challenged story tropes that existed in opera. It may not be too consistent with its “portrayal” of life in the Freemasonry. (Who really knew about life among Freemasons? They’re the most secretive group ever.) But it challenged your perception of the truth. Except that The Speaker did not go the “You can’t handle the truth” route. Instead, he asked Tamino, “Is there proof to what you say?” Tamino then realizes the problem with his quest.
While most operas in Mozart’s time and in some baroque operas, the hero is always perfect, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte is one gullible teen. At least gullible enough for the Queen of the Night to drag into her plan of rescuing Pamina. That gullibility was Tamino’s liability in the earlier parts of Act 1. He was so happy to see the giant serpent dead that he believed Papageno’s claim that he slew the beast. He was so enamored with the picture of Pamina that he believed the Queen of the Night’s claim that Sarastro is an evil tyrant who abducted Pamina. To be fair to Tamino, he lived in a time when queens went out looking for men that their daughters could marry. Pamina was attractive enough for Tamino to take the bait.
At least one part of the Queen’s claim turned out to be true = Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). He played it to console himself when he thought he had lost hope in finding Pamina. Music also served as a way to get out of a sticky situation for Papageno and Pamina. Yes, Papageno beat Tamino in finding Pamina, another flaw that was obvious for Tamino as a major character in an opera. At least it made him somewhat relatable to men trying to be the best for their beloved. Back to Papageno, his problem on the other hand was how talkative he is. Maybe if he didn’t tell Pamina about Tamino, Pamina wouldn’t end up daydreaming about the time when Tamino finally “rescues” her.
If Pamina is waiting to be rescued, why did she apologize to Sarastro for trying to escape? It’s the angle that made me think that it was Monostatos who kidnapped Pamina. But Sarastro did not return Pamina to her mother. The secretive nature of Sarastro and his minions helped at least put some mystery into the storyline. This way, Die Zauberflöte keeps on garnering new fans not only for its music but also for its plot.
Let’s try addressing the elephant in the room, shall we? That “racist” label that still gets thrown against Die Zauberflöte. This version of Die Zauberflöte features a tenor in blackface portraying Monostatos. He has uncontrollable carnal desire for Pamina. If he wasn’t so inept in this story, he might have gotten his way in her. I have yet to see a version that casts actual black people in the role of Monostatos and his minions. Now just because a man with dark skin is portrayed as a lecherous creep with nothing better to do, it says that all men of similar features possess the same attributes.
Monostatos is a creep, yes. But remember how he has slaves too. And they have the same skin color as he. (And they are also played by actors in blackface.) These slaves hate him so much. They wanted him dead. They even cheered when Monostatos got punished at one point. Slavery sucks. But it existed at the same time that Die Zauberflöte was premiered. So as a period piece, it managed to be faithful to the era from which it was created. (I’d be discussing other versions of Monostatos in future articles. Besides I failed to mention how Monostatos was white in the 2015 Teatro La Fenice version in my previous article.)
Perhaps today, the worst kept spoiler about Die Zauberflöte is the Queen of the Night. With various singing competition hopefuls around the world using Der Holle Rache as an audition piece, other non-opera fans might have caught up with why the lyrics talk about death, destruction and the gods of vengeance. The Queen of Belcanto herself, Edita Gruberova, inhabited the role with a technique that fitted the coloratura needed for the aria. Aria 1 was sung complete with sad/melancholic facial expressions as if the Queen was soliciting some mercy from Tamino. Aria 2 was sung with an obvious distance from Pamina. It’s not that mother-and-daughter are not close. But it’s that part where she starts to turn cold because of her agenda.
So we have our lead characters, Tamino and Pamina, presented as gullible teens and flawed human beings. How can they redeem themselves? That’s when the titular instrument in Die Zauberflöte becomes useful. Besides, the only claims that got proven correctly in the story were the flute and the silver bells. It may have been an allusion to how music gets things right. And that statement is very correct when it comes to the arias found in Die Zauberflöte.
I remember saying in some articles I wrote for Musicals Online that for a musical production to be a hit, it should have memorable songs. Or in the case of opera, memorable arias. My personal favorite apart from Der Holle Rache was “Pa-Pa-Pa”. It really served Papageno’s purpose - to be the comic relief in an otherwise dark and twisted opera. The dark and twisted aspects of Die Zauberflöte are not very obvious because of the chirpy music. They become obvious in the scenes where Pamina and Papageno contemplated suicide (in separate scenes, just to be clear).
This version of Die Zauberflöte is available on Amazon for you to enjoy. Just click here as it doesn’t seem like there are many copies left. You might want to beat the most hardcore Gruberova fans to the last copy. Just don’t forget to do me a favor in return for this article. Click the “Donate” button below for tips in appreciation of what I wrote. Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment