Fluting It Out on Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
The Backstory
Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, opera in two acts (1791)
I'm Mozart, and this is the backstory of Die Zauberflöte. You'll learn how money worries in 1791 led me to write my last opera for a popular suburban theater, and how a hard time can bring out something joyful. Because this site also teaches you, together with my fellow composers, to recognize our pieces when they play, take a turn in the Trainer and try it.
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Bills on the Table
The year was 1791, and I had no idea it would be my last. What I did know was that I was in serious financial trouble, so I was in no position to turn down work. The work that arrived became Die Zauberflöte, my final opera. Some of my favorite music came out of my least comfortable moments, and this was one of them.The Man With the Theater
The offer came from Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto and ran his own theater, the Theater auf der Wieden. It was a popular theater in a Vienna suburb, not a grand house with chandeliers and princes in the front row. Schikaneder commissioned the opera for exactly that crowd, and I liked the idea of writing for them. Ordinary people who paid for their own tickets can be the most honest audience a composer ever gets.Singing and Talking
Die Zauberflöte is a Singspiel, which is simply a comic opera in German, with songs and spoken dialogue in between. That means the characters sometimes stop singing and just talk to each other, the way people do in a play. I think that made it feel closer to the audience, because they could follow every word in their own language. It was designed for a broad public rather than for aristocratic courts, and I wrote it with that in mind.A Secret Handshake or Two
Schikaneder and I were both Freemasons, and you can feel that in the opera's ideas and imagery. The number three keeps turning up as a Masonic symbol, and you meet it in the three ladies and the three boys. How much of the story is actual Masonic ritual is something scholars still argue about, and I'm not going to settle it here. I'll only say that a lodge member and a theater man writing together were bound to leave some fingerprints.A Bit of Everything
It would be a mistake to call it a Masonic opera and leave it there, because the story draws on several sources, folklore among them. That's why it feels like a fairy tale, set in a magical land that never gets a name. You won't find it on any map, and honestly you don't need one. A fairy tale can carry serious ideas without anyone feeling lectured, which was a big part of the appeal for me.Be Careful Who You Trust
Here's the little I'll tell you about the story, because I don't want to spoil it. A prince named Tamino is persuaded by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina from a man called Sarastro. Tamino and a bird-catcher named Papageno are given a magic flute and magic bells to help them along. But what Tamino finds in Sarastro's community isn't at all what he was led to expect, and I'll leave it at that.Opening Night
The first performance was on 30 September 1791, at Schikaneder's theater. I conducted, and Schikaneder himself stepped on stage as Papageno, which seemed only fair since he'd written the part. It was an immediate hit, and I can tell you that a happy audience is a very good medicine for a worried composer. That mattered a great deal to me after such a stressful few months.Keeping It in the Family
My sister-in-law, Josepha Hofer, sang the Queen of the Night at the premiere, and she was 32 at the time. Benedikt Schack was my Tamino, Anna Gottlieb sang Pamina, and Franz Xaver Gerl took the part of Sarastro. The story goes that later on, when I was ill in bed, I asked my wife to imagine Josepha singing the Queen's aria that evening. Nobody can say for certain whether that really happened, so please take it as an anecdote and not as a fact.The Show Goes On
Only two months after the premiere, on 5 December 1791, I died, at the age of 35. Schikaneder later gave a benefit performance to help my widow Constanze, and I'm still grateful for that. Meanwhile the opera kept filling his theater, and it reached hundreds of performances during the 1790s. It's still among the most performed operas in the world, which is a pretty cheerful ending for something I wrote while the bills were piling up.---
I wrote Die Zauberflöte in the last year of my life, and when I look back on it now, I'm struck by how much warmth came out of such a difficult time. I finished the opera in 1791, with money worries still hanging over me, and I never saw how far it would travel. It was a hit from the very first performance, and it has gone on being one of the most performed operas of all. Two months after the premiere I was gone, so the story ends there for me, but the music kept on without me. Schikaneder, the man who gave me the commission, later put on a benefit performance to help my widow Constanze, and I'm still grateful for that kindness. Did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Die Zauberflöte? I hope it made the opera feel a little closer, and that you'll listen with a few new things in mind. There is still a lot more to explore in Die Zauberflöte, from the Masonic ideas that scholars still argue about to the folklore that also feeds the story. You can also spend time with the characters, such as Tamino, Pamina, Papageno and Sarastro, who turns out to be quite different from what you first expect. If you'd like to go further, please click on the links provided and keep exploring Die Zauberflöte at your own pace.