The Magic Flute of Mozart

When talking about The Magic Flute, we are in fact dealing with two plays: one is the work of Emanuel Schikaneder, written for a Viennese suburban theatre solely for the purpose of light entertainment, being full of meaningless deviations, crackpot philosophy, superficiality, with virtually no reference to love and human relations, with characters that verge on being lifeless puppets and a storyline that is driven by nothing more than cheap gratification.

Then there is another Magic Flute, written by Mozart around the libretto of Schikaneder but surpassing it by far. Mozart did not write fairy tales; rather, he was fascinated by human relationships, personalities, discord and the inner struggle. The libretto of The Magic Flute gives little scope for such depictions, so he wrote it in music: he composed an opera entitled The Magic Flute that, due to its Singspiel genre and weak libretto was fragmentary yet it still offers a profound insight into the human soul.

The majority of the reams of literature on The Magic Flute try desperately – and in vain – to somehow harmonize the libretto with the music of Mozart. But whatever one ascribes to the piece (magical tale, Masonic parable etc.) there is simply no way of resolving the fundamental contradiction: the two pieces are not the same.

Our performance is an experiment to deliver Mozart's Magic Flute from the Schikaneder libretto. We make no attempt to harmonize the two works that differ enormously in quality; instead, we rewrite the opera that Mozart composed on the pretext of the libretto of Schikaneder. Where the libretto says aria we make a dramatic scene; there is a story, and we use it to peer into the depths of the human soul. The fairy tale counterparts of good and evil (including numerous uninterpretable details) are done away with, replaced by complex personalities struggling with their dark and light sides, irreconcilable. That is why the magic flute, the music, is so important; it harmonizes reason and passion. Only music can achieve this.

This is the opera Mozart wrote. It only needed to be released from an ephemeral libretto, which by now has lost all its light and humour. The order of the musical numbers also had to be restructured, the pathos had to be dumped, the dramatic possibilities in the arias unfolded, and the role of the sung parts enhanced. I believe this Magic Flute is extremely faithful to Mozart. And disrespectful towards Schikaneder. But since he made effective theatre for his own age, he would not be bothered by adaptations...