Opera Paper
Eric Lax Opera
Assignment Magic Flute 2/13/18 ART 211 Professor Roundtree
The opera I choice
to go see was Magic Flute “Die Zauberflöte” which was written by Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart in 1791. This opera was the last one that Mozart
would write before his death the very same year. Mozart who was a member of the Free Masons makesa point to
use a lot of the symbolism of this group by having many of the characters that
are together in groups of three because three is one of the symbols of the Free
Masons. For example, the Queen has
three ladies who follow her, there are three spirits, three slave and three
trials for Tamino and Papageno to complete. Through out the show passages are written in three stanzas. (Britannica) This show like a few others of Mozart’s
operas, he wrote The Magic Flute as a singspiel. Singspiel translates to sing play, but just an opera that
has dialogue. This style of opera
was the predecessor to the present day Broadway musical. (Samantha Lax)
The
story of Magic flute starts with the main character Tamino coming face to face
with a giant serpent. He
eventually faints from his battle with the serpent. Three ladies come to his rescue and defeat the beast and
save his life. The ladies then go
into how handsome Tamino is and fight over him while he is still
unconscious. The three of them
then leave and go to tell the Queen of the Night about how handsome this man
is, and that he could be the one to go and free the queen’s daughter from Sarostro. Tamino soon awakes to find Papageno and
the serpent is dead. He thinks that Papageno is the one that killed the
serpent. The Queen’s three ladies
return and set Tamino on a journey to go free Pamina the Queen’s daughter from
Sarasto’s grip. Tamino and
Papageno take on the journey and soon get separated but it is Papageno who
finds Pamina and brings her and Tamino together.
In act two; Sarastro’s
who tells them that the only way that they Tamino and Pamina will ever be
together is to take the challenge of facing the three trials so meets Tamino
and Papageno. These trials are
suppose to test them in the most grueling way possible. While this is going on Monostatos one
of Sarastro’s slave’s tries to molest, Pamina but is stopped by his master and is
sent off. Pamina then is greeted
by her mother who instructs her to kill Sarastro and take back the kingdom for her. The whole plan is stopped because Sarastro
finds out about this plan and Pamina sees that her mother is in the wrong and
Pamina turns on her mother to join Sarastro. During one of the tasks Tamino and Papageno are instructed
not to talk and as a way to try and break Tamino’s silence Pamina is told to go
and see him but Tamino will not speak.
This makes Pamina feel like he does not love her anymore and she is
about to kill herself but the Three Spirits stop her. They tell her all about the trials and why Tamino could not
speak to her. After the trails the
Two men are met by the women that the two will marry and the Queen of the Night
is vanquished.
Since
I was able to go and see the opera in person, I think it was a lot easier to
get a feel for the mise en scene of the show. The surprising thing I found was that the set never changed
except for some props that the characters would be caring. The lighting was the biggest aspect to
making the scenery change to look differently. The fact that the lighting director was able to give the
audience that sense of change with just lighting, I think is an incredible feat. For example, when scenes are supposed
to look as if the characters are outside the lights would have a green and
yellow light. This gave the set a
woodsy feeling. When inside Sarastro’s
palace the lights are all a gold color that makes reflects of the set pieces to
give it a great gold look to it.
This light also reflects of the gold robes warn by the priest and
Sarastro. I think that only having
the lights changing to make the scenes change is a great thing to not distract
or take away from the performance by having to move large set pieces off of the
stage. With the aspect of not
moving the set pieces I think that it gives the audience a better understanding
of the show being they do not have to wait for the set to change and start a
new change. I like that it did not
change because I was able to have full focus on the music and the dialogue.
This
opera was very important to the time period that it was written in because of
the language that Mozart wrote it in.
The opera was written in German which was not the norm because at the
time operas were primarily written in Italian. Mozart wrote this in Opera in German so it could appeal to
the everyday person. (Samantha Lax) This was a way that the common folk of Austria and
Germany could enjoy this show because German was the primary language of those
two countries. This being said the
opera that I went to go see the Singing was all done in German along with the
translations on projection screens.
The dialogue was spoken in English which was so that there was not a big
distraction of reading the translations through out the entire show.
If
I was a 21st century director I would have this opera made into a
video game like Mario. This is
because it is someone having to go rescue a princess from a villain. In the first part of the game Tamino
has to fight the serpent but as we know faints and that is when Papageno comes
into the game and the player will go between playing with Tamino and Papageno
to get their way to rescue Tamino.
Through out the game it will shift to other charaters like when Pamina
is instructed to go and kill Sarastro.
This section the player would have to go through Sarastro’s castle and find
him to complete the level. The
game would finsish with the vanquish of The Queen of the Night and The closing
scene would be Tamino and Pamino getting married.
Overall,
I thought that this Opera was fantastic.
I think the fact that I got to see it in person I was able to get a
better understanding of the entire show.
I was also surprised that it was very funny because I feel like many
people think operas are very serious.
This is not always the case.
Schwarm, Betsy, and Linda Cantoni.
“The Magic Flute.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.,
4 Jan. 2015, www.britannica.com/topic/The-Magic-Flute.
Samantha
Lax (My Sister), Played The Second Spirit in Magic Flute, St Petersburg Opera
Company, Feb 2,4,6, http://stpeteopera.org
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