I would say that your characterization of perfectly straightforward
and sensible is also an exaggeration. ... it is not perfectly
straightforward to open the drama with a kimono-clad Egyptian prince
Nothing the audience experiences marks him as Egyptian, for nobody ever
says so on stage. He's a foreign prince in Japanese (Javanese?)
costume, so for all any of *us* know, he's from there.
chased by a giant snake,
So much for Fafner. And every other fantasy with a dragon in it.
and it is not perfectly sensible that he sees a small portrait of a
princess and instantly falls in love with her. Yes, we accept these
things because that's the sort of story it is, but that doesn't make
it sensible or straightforward.
If love at first sight were not sensible and straightforward, those
four words would never have become an English idiom. Compare, in that
regard, they lived happily ever after--which also happens very rarely
in real life, but is perfectly comprehensible and even expected in this
kind of tale.
It is surely not at all straightforward that most of the first act is
devoted to setting up a dramatic situation in which the hero promises
the virtuous queen that he will save the princess from the evil
villain, only to have the scenario abruptly turned upside-down for the
rest of the opera.
The queen is attempting to use Tamino as a cat's paw. Neither he nor
the audience learn this until we have a chance to observe Sarastro in
person. This is not even faintly unrealistic, and is 100% in character
for the queen, whom we elsewhere observe being consistently ruthless,
single-minded, and manipulative.
In fact, though, the music more than hints at the queen's real
character long before the libretto reveals it: the vocal hysterics in
O zittre nicht suggest something much more sinister than just a
grieving mother.
It feels more like the librettist started writing one story and then
changed his mind and morphed it into a different story (which, in
fact, is exactly what happened).
There is not the slightest evidence for this. In fact, when I took the
standard music history survey as an undergraduate, the professor
specifically warned us against this as a 19th-century misinterpretation
that no longer carried any credibility. Schikaneder testifies that he
and Mozart planned the libretto *together* with great care (den Text
mit dem seligen Mozart fleissig durchdacht).
there is a difference between a story like this one (or, eg, Love for
Three Oranges), as opposed to a story like Traviata or Otello.
The _Love for Three Oranges_ is a deliberate sendup of its genre, while
_The Magic Flute_ is meant to be taken seriously. A better comparison
would be with Shakespeare's _Tempest_, which Mozart's contemporaries
would have known as _Der Sturm oder die Zauberinsel_, and which could
be (but isn't) accused of even more inconsistencies and
improbabilities.
The libretto to _The Magic Flute_ was highly admired by no less a
figure than Goethe, who even wrote a sequel to it; the opinion of an
author of such stature is not, I think, lightly to be dismissed.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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