Die Zauberflöte, Deutsche Oper, 11 January 2024

Sarastro – Tobias Kehrer
Tamino – Kieran Carrel
Speaker – Padraic Rowan
First Priest – Kyle Miller
Second Priest – Jörg Schörner
Queen of the Night – Hye-Young Moon
Pamina – Elena Tsallagova
First Lady – Flurina Stucki
Second Lady – Arianna Manganello
Third Lady – Davia Bouley
Papagena – Meechot Marrero
Papageno – Philipp Jekal
Monostatos – Burkhard Ulrich
First Armoured Man – Patrick Cook
Second Armoured Man – Youngkwang Oh
Three Boys – Soloists from the Children’s Choir of the Deutsche Oper

Director – Günter Krämer
Revival director – Gerlinde Pelkowski
Designs – Andreas Reinhardt

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (chorus director: Thomas Richter) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Giulio Cilona (conductor)

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Bettina Stöß
Images from 2008, with different cast

Premiered on 24 September 1991, six days short of 200 years from the work’s first performance, Günther Krämer’s Magic Flute has done sterling service for the Deutsche Oper. The company would have had more than a year’s worth, if it performed this single work daily without a break, the performance total having reached 379. The work is no stranger to longstanding productions: Achim Freyer’s truly magical staging (I saw it twice in Salzburg) did the rounds for a good few years; David McVicar’s Covent Garden production has been seen regularly, though not so regularly as that, for more than two decades now. Closer to home, August Everding’s tedious offering for the Berlin Staatsoper has been around since 1994 and clocked up 300 in 2021, though it has now been joined in repertoire by a more innovative staging from Yuval Sharon. I have no idea what holds the record; it would not surprise me if there had been something at some point in Vienna, or indeed at another German theatre, small or large, in repertoire for a few more decades, though that is pure speculation. Krämer must surely, though, be a contender in a work whose particular German circumstances seem to conspire towards endless revival: popular here, there, and everywhere ever since 1791; written in the vernacular; rightly or wrongly (to my mind, at least questionably), considered by many to be suitable for children; thereby presenting something approaching box-office certainty for something that is not La bohème, Carmen, or La traviata.

It was the first time I had seen it, so I cannot claim any of the attachment some veterans will doubtless feel for it. It did its job well enough, I thought, though by now it will surely lie at some remove from either the director’s ‘intention’ or what it might have been today. It does not look tired in the way some productions, desperately needing to put out of their (and our) misery do; Andreas Reinhardt’s designs, clear, colourful, and not without mystery, continue to fulfil their brief. It is difficult at this remove to discern a particular standpoint, let alone concept; perhaps there never was one, though I suspect there may have been elements of that once. In particular, I suspect a degree of social criticism would once have come across stronger, not least with respect to the treatment of Pamina and thus women more broadly. Her uncertainty and something approaching momentary horror in the closing scene, realising an apparent lack of agency and, just perhaps, resolving to restore that in the future were intriguing. Concerning racial politics, I wonder whether the portrayal of Monastatos and other slaves in what appeared to be native American garb once made a point that has now been lost (at least for me). It was deeply uncomfortable to view in 2024, and not in an obviously productive way. I wonder whether something might yet be done about that by a future revival director, should there be one, whilst bearing in mind the lack of rehearsal such revivals are likely to be allocated.

 

Ultimately more detrimental to the dramatic flow were the cuts in dialogue. There is no need to be a purist about that: very few productions use Schikaneder complete, and not only for reasons of sex and gender. But the precise nature of the cuts sometimes made motivation and even straightforward action unclear. Many will have known what to fill in, but many in such an audience also will not. No one need be bored in a largely German-speaking audience by a little more pertinent spoken content. 

The other major problem was Giulio Cilona’s conducting. We all, of course, have different conceptions of the work and how it should ‘go’. Not everyone responds as I do to Klemperer, Böhm, or Furtwängler; nor do I expect everyone to do so. In any case, the question is largely irrelevant since none of them is with us, and no one conducts Mozart quite like any of them any more. (Having heard Colin Davis several times in this and other Mozart operas, I have surely had my share of good fortune for a while, perhaps even for a lifetime.) Disconnection between pit and stage can happen to anyone, though preferably less frequently than here, even on what was probably minimal rehearsal. But the lack of sense that anything might matter, taking too much at an all-purpose allegro and indifferent mezzo piano, ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’ a merciful exception, led to a desultory orchestral performance all round. I initially assumed the string section must have been very small. However, though I could not see the rest of the section, I could see four double basses, so it could not have been that small. The angel of death appeared to be on strike for what should be the terrifying scene with the Two Armoured Men. So did Bach—and even Mozart. An old production needs all the more to be brought to life by comprehending, sympathetic conducting. Such was not the case here.

There was, fortunately, nothing to disappoint in the vocal performances—again bearing in mind the realities of an ultimate repertoire piece in a repertoire house. Kieran Carrel’s Tamino was well sung, personable, very much in recognisable character. Likewise our Papageno, Philipp Jekal’s performance bringing together with skill lightly worn a number of different theatrical and emotional worlds. Tobias Kehrer’s Sarastro made the most of his low notes in particular, alert to deeper meaning without sacrificing essential or at least apparent ‘simplicity’. Hye-Young Moon’s Queen of the Night implored and sought vengeance with impressive accuracy and sparkle. Burkhard Ulrich’s Monastatos was properly sung, no mere caricature: particularly important given the character’s problematical portrayal. Performances from the Three Ladies and Three Boys all deserve favourable mention. For me, though, the stand-out vocal performance was Elena Tsallagova's as Pamina: clean of line, happy of musical and dramatic blend, and with true emotional depth that saw no need to draw attention to itself. Though I cannot help but feel it might be time to draw the final curtain on Krämer’s production, a few more performances such as Tsallagova’s might help delay the inevitable.

Salzburg Festival (6) – Mozart, Die Zauberflöte, 27 August 2022

Grosses Festspielhaus

Images: SF / Sandra Then

 
Sarastro – Tareq Nazmi
Tamino – David Fischer, Mauro Peter
Queen of the Night – Brenda Rae
Pamina – Regula Mühlemann
Three Ladies – Ilse Eerens, Sophie Rennert, Noa Beinart
Papageno – Michael Nagl
Papagena – Maria Nazarova
Monostatos – Peter Tantsits
Speaker, First Priest, Second Armoured Man – Henning von Schulman
Second Priest, First Armoured Man – Simon Bode
Grandfather – Roland Koch
Three Boys – Stanislas Koromyslov, Yvo Otelli, Raphael Andreas Chiang
Old Papagena/Cook – Stefan Vitu
Third Priest – Valérie Junker

Lydia Steier (director)
Katharina Schlipf (set designs)
Ursula Kudrna (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Momme Hinrichs (video)
Ina Karr, Maurice Lenhard (dramaturgy)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera (chorus director: Jörn Hinnerk Andresen)

Angelika-Prokopp-Summer Academy of the Vienna Philharmonic (stage music)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Joana Mallwitz (conductor)

When Lydia Steier first presented her Salzburg Magic Flute in 2018, the world was, as they say, a very different place. The trials of the intervening years have left their mark on this wholesale revision. So, I think, has more general experience. Perhaps it is also a matter of my being more receptive; it is always difficult to know about oneself. (These are all, by the way, surely themes of the opera, as well as of this production and its way into the world.) At any rate, where I was far from convinced by its earlier, circus incarnation—not on principle, Achim Freyer’s enchanting, classic production remaining one of my favourites—I found myself intrigued and involved by many aspects of this Neueinstudierung.

It takes place in an upper-class household shortly before the outbreak of the Great War. Parallels, sadly, speak all too well for themselves here. Following an argument over dinner—staged as an overture pantomime—the three boys are sent to their room, and their grandfather reads them a story, his narration largely though not entirely replacing Schikaneder’s dialogue. (It is a pity, but Steier in the programme makes a good case that, given the realities of theatre and rehearsal, even at a Festival such as this, despatch of the dialogue by an international cast will often leave a good deal to be desired.) A fairytale unfolds, in words (by Steier and dramaturge Ina Karr, paying homage to venerable collections such as those of the Brothers Grimm), the imagination of grandfather and boys alike, and thus also in gesture and music. Members of the household—family, servants, and visitors—furnish the cast of the Singspiel. Tragedy from the grandfather’s past informs the action, when, in a magical feat fully worthy of the opera, his late wife, who took her own life, steps out of the painting on the wall. Will Tamino and Pamina fare better? Perhaps that hope, that intent, informs the story the captivating Roland Koch continues to tell.

Steier captures well many of the work's ambiguities, rightly saying (in a programme interview) that ‘there is no black or white in this opera, only grey’. Or rather a multitude of colours, but perhaps that amounts to the same thing ethically. In the second act, it becomes clear that a male-dominated society, Sarastro’s, will lead the boys—and the world—to war. There is a degree of excitement to that for the boys, of course, but we, quite rightly, fear. The sermonising of Sarastro and his order should not be taken at face value. Perhaps ‘wisdom’ is not always what it seems, and Papageno (the butcher’s boy) might have a better idea. Pamina’s boldness, quite different from that of the mute, veiled women we see elsewhere, permits her entry. But perhaps there was no right path after all; that will most likely be a story for another day.

Joana Mallwitz’s conducting was to my ears considerably more successful than that of her 1998 predecessor (Constantinos Carydis). It is fresh, almost modest, certainly worlds away from a Klemperer or a Böhm (or a Colin Davis, for that matter). But the production teaches us to beware male authority figures. In any case, this is clearly how Mallwitz hears the music; she and the Vienna Philharmonic communicate well its inner life, its sheer variety and, ultimately, many aspects of its miraculous unity.

Tareq Nazmi’s Sarastro was in something of a similar vein: less stolid than sometimes one hears, though with enough pomposity to fit role and production. Brenda Rae’s Queen of the Night startled in offering much more than mere set pieces; within the confines of the role, she hinted at greater humanity, more of a back story, and she acted as well as sang. An indisposed Mauro Peter’s last replacement, David Fischer—Peter continuing to act the role onstage—impressed greatly as Tamino. He would have done regardless of the circumstances. Ardent, sweet-toned, and well able to shape a clean yet infinitely touching line, Fischer offered Mozart singing of the first rank. Regula Mühlemann’s Pamina, possessed of clear inner resolve, likewise touched the heart-strings, not least in a well-judged ‘Ach, ich fühl’s, which resisted the unaccountable fashion of taking it as fast as possible. Michael Nagl’s lively Papageno chose to look on the brighter side of life, but hinted, sometimes more than that, at a broader emotional hinterland too. The chorus, unseen (Covid-safe, perhaps), impressed throughout.

Special mention, though, should go to the three members of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, Stanislas Koromyslov, Yvo Otelli, and Raphael Andreas Chiang: on stage pretty much the whole time, now with important speaking and acting roles, in addition to their singing, all of which was accomplished with convincing, indeed outstanding results. Maybe there is, after all, hope for a European future, whether in musical terms or beyond.

 

Die Zauberflöte, Royal College of Music, 26 November 2021

Britten Theatre

Sarastro – Jamie Woollard
Tamino – Ted Black
Speaker – Dafydd Allen
Teachers – Henry Wright, Sam Harris
Queen of the Night – Heming Li
Pamina – Hyoyoung Kim
Three Ladies – Lylis O’Hara, Annabel Kennedy, Emma Roberts
Three Junior Girls – Leah Redmond, Denira Coleman, Taryn Surratt
Papagena – Sofia Kirwan-Baez
Papageno – Theo Perry
Monostatos – Harry Grigg
Two Boys – Daniel Bray Bell, Redmond Sanders
Chorus – Madeline Boreham, Angelina Dorlin-Barlow, Matthew Curtis, Sam Hind

Polly Graham (director)
Louise Bakker (associate director)
Rosie Elnile, Hazel Low (designs)
Tim Mitchell (lighting)

Kate Flatt (movement)  

Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra

Michael Rosewell (conductor)

 

A week that brought excellent student shows from two London conservatoires, both the Royal Academy of Music (L’Heure espagnole and Gianni Schicchi) and the Royal College (Die Zauberflöte) offered encouraging news for our often hesitant operatic recovery. In many ways, this Magic Flute came close to ideal: committed performances from a highly talented cast of young singers, a provocative production by Polly Graham, and a warm yet incisive orchestral reading—rarely did one notice the small numbers in the pit—from Michael Rosewell. How preferable this was, in almost every respect, to Covent Garden’s dull revival of David McVicar’s superannuated production in September under leaden musical direction. 

Graham’s feminist standpoint was refreshing for an opera often accused, sometimes justly, often unjustly, of misogyny. It is a standpoint, though, not an end in itself: a way of looking at an opera, of permitting its characters to speak, sing, and to be reconsidered. The opera takes place in a somewhat old-fashioned secondary school, replete not only with blazers (often honoured in not being worn) and teachers in tweed, but also marijuana and abuse, both drivers of the action. For Pamina, more central than ever I can recall seeing her, embarks on her journey following creepy advances from Sarastro, and she is the one who plays the field—will she choose Tamino or her boyfriend of apparently longer standing?—and offers others a path to temporary enlightenment via a spliff. If there is to be deeper, more rooted enlightenment, it will come neither via narcotics nor through the restoration of Sarastro’s order at the close, but through the psychoanalytical world of a magic garden beyond the school wall, in which fantastical events take place, later to be interpreted. Music in performance is very much part of that interpretation, as witnessed by Papageno’s bells and Tamino’s flute. I cannot help but think that Michael Tippett would have loved it, though this was more Freud than Jung. Tamino certainly learns better than his teachers have taught him, both through the example of Pamina and the love they feel for each other; likewise, of course, Papageno and Papagena. 

Ted Black and Hyoyoung Kim proved an outstanding central couple, offering fresh-toned musical performances fully worthy of starrier stages (though with the bonus of a small theatre enabling us to see and hear them closer-up). Pamina’s attempted suicide in ‘Ach ich fühl’s’ was deeply moving, convincingly paced and spun; Tamino’s quest for self-discovery not only convinced but drew one in to empathise. Theo Perry’s Papageno likewise emerged more rounded than often one sees and hears: no mere caricature, but a flesh-and-blood human being with desires and feelings of his own, beautifully expressed through music and gesture—and splendidly reciprocated by Sofia Kirwan-Baez as Papagena, her part considerably more substantial than is usually the case. Jamie Harry Grigg’s rascally Monastatos was similarly much more of a multi-dimensional character: tribute to both production and performance. Woollard’s vocal dignity as Sarastro duly troubled. Heming Li came as close to thorough accuracy as anyone has the right to expect in her glistening accounts of the Queen of the Night’s arias. All contributed, though, to the greater dramatic whole in a fine company performance, with some light, tasteful ornamentation that enhanced rather than distracted. 

This was accomplished with a few, relatively minor cuts and changes to the text. (An exception to that ‘minor’ qualification was the inserted cadenza for the Three Ladies in the first scene. Fortunately, we heard no more in that vein.) Titles helped draw out further meaning, sometimes engaging more with what we saw rather than heard on stage, sometimes offering a bridge between the two. The ‘original’, whatever that may be, will not go away; or rather, if we consider it as anything more than the score and libretto, it will never come back, since we have little idea what it was in the first place. Our visual imagination fastens on Schinkel, if anywhere: wonderful, but nothing to do with 1791. Opera must never degenerate into a museum piece; it must live and breathe, which it unquestionably did here.

Die Zauberflöte, Royal Opera, 15 September 2021

Royal Opera House

Tamino – Bernard Richter
Pamina – Salome Jicia
Papageno – Huw Montague Rendall
Queen of the Night – Brenda Rae
Sarastro – Krzysztof Baczyk
Monostatos – Michael Colvin
Papagena – Haegee Lee
Speaker – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Three Ladies – Alexandra Lowe, Hanna Hipp, Stephanie Wake-Edwards
Two Priests – Harry Nicoll, Donald Maxwell
Two Armoured Men – Alan Pingarrón, James Platt
Three Boys – Rafael Flutter, Benjamin Jardim, Victor Wiggin

David McVicar (director)
Dan Dooner (revival director)
John Macfarlane (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Leah Hausman, Angelo Smimmo (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

Images: Bill Cooper. (C) ROH 2021

David McVicar’s 2003 Magic Flute production is really starting to look—more to the point, feel—its age. When fresh and new, especially when conducted by Colin Davis, it had a winning sense of theatrical wonder. If it never tried to plumb the work’s Enlightenment, Rosicrucian, or other depths, it left open possibilities in performance for others to do so. There was striking imagery in John Macfarlane’s designs and the story was told with clarity and intelligence—even if the final scene always seemed a little trite. Now, however, on its n^th revival, much has degenerated into mere silliness. There is enough there to remind us of what it once was, with stronger direction, but enough missing to have one regret its lack. Seeing the first night of this revival on the same day that Nadine Dorries was named Culture Secretary suggested a rare moment of Dorries enlightenment, given her strange claim that ‘left-wing snowflakes’ had somehow managed to ‘dumb down’ pantomime. Once we reached the stage of fart jokes, I began to wonder whether, politics and flakiness aside, Dorries might, perish the thought, have unwittingly hit on a point. I suspect coronavirus restrictions played a part, getting in the way not only of interaction but some of the more ambitious mechanical elements, but it was difficult not to think more interesting solutions might have been explored. Perhaps there was simply not enough rehearsal time.

Tamino (Bernard Richter)

Singing, at least, was in another league. Bernard Richter’s Tamino was everything one could reasonably expect: alluring of tone, careful of words, warmly sympathetic. Huw Montague Rendall’s Papageno proved both lively and thoughtful, likewise respectful of the text, whist appreciating that it is the starting- and not the end-point for a performance. His was a properly physical performance, which nonetheless appreciated that there is much more to the character than that. Salome Jicia’s beautifully sung and acted Pamina and Brenda Rae’s astonishingly accurate, far from entirely unsympathetic Queen of the Night impressed similarly. The Three Boys can sometimes prove a weak link, but not here, Rafael Flutter, Benjamin Jardim, Victor Wiggin comprising an uncommonly fine trio. Krzysztof Baczyk initially sounded a little underpowered as Sarastro, but came into his own in the second act. Choral singing had its moments, in positive and less positive ways.

Brenda Rae (Queen of the Night)

Hartmut Haenchen’s conducting could have been worse. Indeed, I have heard much worse, though a rushed, scrappy Overture, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House on decidedly sub-par form, was cause for concern. Thereafter, breackneck tempi were not, let us be thankful, the order of the day. Indeed, speeds in themselves were rarely a problem. There was rarely much sense of grace, light, or indeed, where necessary, wisdom and weight in the orchestra and its direction, though; for that, the singers seemed more or less left to themselves. Instead, we trudged from number to number, sometimes even from bar to bar, without much sense of a greater whole. It was dutiful Kapellmeisterei, neither more nor less, a world away from Constantin Trinks’s revelatory Don Giovanni in here July.

An unruly audience did not help, applauding, even cheering etween and sometimes even in the middle of numbers: the second-act finale, for instance. That may occasionally, regrettably, happen, but Haenchen seemed to go out of his way to facilitate it. (He even turned for a bow at one point.) So, still more, did the revival direction, which went so far as to leave pauses without anyone or anything on stage. There is quietly accepting the near-inevitable; there can even be metatheatrical framing; there is also pandering to the lowest common denominator. If The Magic Flute is not about about gently, joyously assisting Bildung or self-cultivation, then I do not know what is. Ultimately, though, this speaks of how tired McVicar’s production has become. Time for a change, I think.

Papageno (Huw Montague Rendall)

When a work such as this is given in the original language—German at least, though little sounded especially Viennese—the dialogue needs greater attention. Fidelio often suffers similarly. Some performers were excellent in this respect, Richter and Montague Rendall first and foremost, and there were other perfectly reasonable performances. A few, however, spoke in bizarrely laboured fashion, at barely half speed. The effect was more weirdly expressionist than humorous. Given the dialogue fulfils a similar role here to recitativo secco, it deserves the same care in terms of pacing and rhythm, as well as pronunciation. Appearing to mean something would be a distinct advantage too, as would more accurate titles for those who insist on laughing uproariously at them.

For what it is worth, most of the audience seemed to love it. I was delighted to hear some excellent singing. The production may be seen on ROH Stream from Friday 1 October and is rep until 7 October.

Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte

 

One of the most celebrated set designs in operatic history: Carl Friedrich Schinkel prepares the way for the arrival of the Queen of the Night: Berlin, 1816

I

Giovanni De Gamerra, playwright and librettist, wrote in his 1790 Osservazioni sullo spettacolo:

Theatrical spectacle, established on the basis of wise laws and of careful reform, can be regarded as a means always available to the sovereign power to inculcate in his subjects the most useful and important beliefs. … Has our century not seen an emperor at a performance of La clemenza di Tito listening to the voices of humanity and forgiveness?[1]

These words do not actually refer to Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, whose music would be composed the following year, but to an earlier setting of Pietro Metastasio’s text. The Metastasian tradition of court performance, old-fashioned but not obsolete, presented the monarch with the ideal of a benevolent, moral ruler, which, identified with himself, he would then re-present to the audience.

De Gamerra’s first libretto, amended by Metastasio, was that to Mozart’s – and subsequently Johann Christian Bach’s – Lucio Silla. It achieved the near-impossible task of redeeming Plutarch’s tyrannical Lucius Sulla, transforming him into an agent of Stoic clemency. ‘Theatrical spectacle’ was remote both from mere entertainment and from l’art pour l’art; it was a compulsory class in a school for ruler and ruled. Culture and power were inextricably intertwined in eighteenth-century opera, in terms of commission, composition, characterisation, performance, and reception. These different aspects of the ‘work’ need not always work together; claims are contested as well as reconciled in the operatic arena.

Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este

The perceived power of opera is illustrated by Leopold II’s denunciation of the proposed appointment of De Gamerra as librettist to La Scala. Leopold warned his brother Ferdinand, governor of Lombardy, of De Gamerra’s revolutionary inclinations: ‘fanatic to excess, hot-headed, imprudent concerning … liberty, very dangerous’.[2] A public platform for a ‘fanatic’ might imperil the House of Habsburg – until, that is, de Gamerra prudently modified his behaviour and the Habsburgs graciously revised their opinion, resulting in re-appointment in 1794 as court librettist in Vienna and renewed collaboration with Salieri. De Gamerra’s skill and even Mozart’s genius would come to naught without commission or performance. Artists must deal with authority, and it with them.

Both parties must also contend with the audience. De Gamerra’s words indicate how Mozart’s work would shortly be received, or rather its intended reception; the eighteenth-century public was far from a passive, uncritical receptacle. Indeed, as Tim Blanning has written, ‘both the musician and the society are involved in the creative process.’ Thus, ‘whether Mozart was performing in palaces or public rooms, the audience consisted mainly of nobles. … if it would be pushing the argument too far to classify Mozart’s work as “aristocratic”, it would certainly make more sense than to call it “bourgeois”.’[3] The word ‘aristocratic’ might seem more appropriate to Tito, an opera seria (an Italian opera based upon a time-honoured tragic or heroic subject), than to Die Zauberflöte, a ‘popular’ Singspiel. Such a work might seem to have less obvious connection with issues of culture and power, at least as introduced above, but such a conclusion would be misleading. These issues and some of their implications are the concern of this essay. 

II

 

Milan's forerunner to La Scala: 1747 celebrations for the birth of Archduke Peter Leopold, later Leopold II

Mozart’s operas were written with a variety of patrons and audiences in mind – which is not to claim that they were only written with them in mind. Let us consider a few examples. The aforementioned Lucio Silla was composed in 1772 for Milan’s Regio Ducal Teatro and premièred on St Stephen’s Day, opening the Carnival season. Archduke Ferdinand’s prolonged attention to family correspondence resulted in a two-hour delay, yet this was followed by the success of twenty-five further performances, after which silence ruled until the 1929 Prague revival. Metastasio’s Il re pastore, a celebration of Alexander the Great, was first set in 1751 by the court composer, Giuseppe Bonno for Maria Theresa at Schönbrunn, and subsequently by about twenty-five other composers, including Gluck, whose 1756 version celebrated the birth of Archduke Maximilian Francis. The archduke’s 1775 visit to Salzburg occasioned Mozart’s serenata, which thereafter fell immediately into obscurity. Die Entführung aus dem Serail was composed for Vienna’s National Singspiel, founded by Joseph II and based at the Burgtheater. It ran until the Singspiel’s closure in 1783, its fame spreading rapidly, witnessing first-year productions in Prague, Bonn, Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Warsaw. Vienna, moreover, swiftly revived the piece in 1784, under the aegis of the German company at the Kärntnertor. The idea for an operatic version of Beaumarchais’s anti-aristocratic – ‘bourgeois’? – Le mariage de Figaro may have been Mozart’s own; it was written in 1785-6 for the Burgtheater, the Singspiel having sold out to an Italian company. Although its fame took a little longer to spread than the more obviously ‘popular’ and ‘German’ Entführung, Le nozze di Figaro would soon be the toast of Europe, nobles included. The Emperor’s notorious prohibition of excessive encores attested to rather than denied its popularity; the success of its 1789 Vienna revival helped elicit the imperial commission for Così fan tutte.

Prague Estates Theatre (Nostitzsches Nationaltheater)

First, then, we should consider the immediate context to our two operas, composed and premièred in 1791, the year of Mozart’s death. He had never stood more isolated from the Viennese court theatre. Commissions fell to Salieri rather than to him, and the final blow came in March, when the latest in a line of scandals led to dismissal from his court post of Lorenzo da Ponte, greatest of Mozart’s librettists. Recipients of such largesse as Joseph II could muster would not always find favour with Leopold II and his consort. They did, however, share an interest in opera seria; a successful setting might help secure subsequent commissions.

Tito arose from the Bohemian Estates’ commission to the impresario Domenico Guardasoni and the Nostitzsches Nationaltheater in Prague to stage an opera in celebration of Leopold II’s coronation as King of Bohemia. Despite having commissioned Don Giovanni for Prague in 1787 and presented it subsequently in Leipzig and Warsaw, Guardasoni’s preference had been to engage Salieri, who, perhaps mindful that his operatic style would not please the Emperor, declined five times.[4] Guardasoni then offered Mozart 250 ducats which, given his straitened circumstances, proved ample persuasion. The 8 July contract with the Estates makes interesting reading for post-Romantic readers convinced of artistic autonomy. Clauses include:

1.                               I promise to give … [the Estates] a primo musico [castrato] of the first rank, such as … Marchesini, or Rubinelli [etc.] … Likewise I promise to give them a prima donna … of the first rank and certainly the best of that level free of other engagements …
2.                              I promise to have the poetry of the libretto composed on [one of] the two subjects given to me by His Excellence the Burgrave and to have it set to music by a distinguished composer; but in the case it should not be at all possible to accomplish that in the short time remaining [two months], I promise to procure an opera newly composed on the subject of Metastasio’s Tito.[5]

Leopold II

Mozart had far from a free hand and was firmly put in his place by the greater importance allotted to exemplified singers than to ‘a distinguished composer’. He nevertheless set to work with haste, as needs must. Tito was composed between late July and September 1791 and received its first performance on 6 September, following the coronation. Admission was free, although restricted to ticket-holders. The Krönungsjournal für Prag reported: ‘The house holds a great number of persons, and yet … the demand for tickets was on such an occasion so great, that the supply came to an end, because of which many natives and visitors, among them persons of quality, had to go away again.’[6] Thereafter, however, performances were poorly attended – with the exception of the final evening, which coincided with the premiere in Vienna of Die Zauberflöte.[7] Though not immediately popular, the number of performances increased from 1795, cannily promoted by Constanze Mozart to the public as a ‘last work’.

Die Zauberflöte was born into a very different tradition: Viennese popular theatre. Despite Maria Theresa’s disapproval, the genre had survived and in the 1780s experienced a revival. This was the first – and last – occasion that Mozart composed an opera for a non-court theatre. The suburban Freihaustheater auf der Wieden opened in 1787. Its audiences were mixed, as was its repertoire; alongside ephemeral popular fare, works by Goethe and Schiller were staged, including Don Carlos in 1791. Direction of the Freihaustheater had been assumed in 1789 by Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s librettist and creator of the role of Papageno. Music had always played a role in popular theatre; Haydn had set Der neue krumme Teufel for Gottfried Prehauser’s Hanswurst company in about 1752. Schikaneder, a composer of sorts, nevertheless placed greater emphasis upon music than had generally been the case. He was, moreover, an old friend of Mozart.

Emmanuel Schikaneder, c.1784

Surprisingly little is certain about genesis and composition. Legend has it that Schikaneder, himself in straitened financial circumstances, came to Mozart to plead with the ailing and impecunious composer for assistance, whilst cynically denying our divine genius the sole rights from performances outside the original theatre. There is no basis to this, and considerable reason to doubt it. Much remains mysterious: no contract has survived, and Mozart’s thematic catalogue simply dates the work ‘im Jullius’.[8] Intensive research has nevertheless presented no reason to doubt the tradition that Schikaneder approached Mozart personally at some time during the spring. Studies of the autograph paper-types have shown that most of the music was written before the end of July – not, as used to be thought, after Mozart’s return from Prague.[9]

Reception was largely rapturous: this, too late, was Mozart-the-composer’s greatest popular success. Salieri attended a performance and declared it ‘worthy to be performed at the greatest festival and before the greatest monarch’.[10] The first month saw twenty performances. Soon almost every German city would stage the work. The Prague Nationaltheater did in October 1792, and a Czech version followed from the Vlastenské Divadlo (Patriotic Theatre) company in 1794. This year witnessed De Gamerra furnish a translation, Il flauto magico, performed in Leipzig, Dresden, and Prague (for the carnival) in Guardasoni’s travelling production. The world of Italian opera could readily appreciate the opportunities afforded by Die Zauberflöte’s critical and commercial success. By 1797, Mozart’s Singspiel had reached St Petersburg; its light has shone ever more brightly since.

 

III

Tito is in many respects a typical late opera seria.[11] Its text is by Metastasio, albeit in a revised version. As Daniel Heartz notes: ‘Massive rewriting and substitution was the rule, not the exception.’[12] Metastasio continued to be regarded as the author: ‘poet’ rather than ‘librettist’, as was the case in more ‘popular’ forms. The Caesarian court poet in Vienna, he had published the Tito text in 1734. First set by Antonio Caldara, Vice-Kapellmeister, to celebrate Charles VI’s birthday that year, we know of forty subsequent settings prior to Mozart’s, notably by Johann Adolf Hasse (1735, heard by Mozart in Cremona in 1770), the pre-reformist Gluck (1752), and Josef Mysliveček (1773). The text would continue to attract composers into the nineteenth century, at least as far as Antonio del Fante for Florence in 1802. This celebrated text provided manifold connections with what has been dismissed as an ‘outdated’ musical tradition, yet which, Gluck’s reforms notwithstanding, stubbornly continued to thrive, especially in Italy.

Wolfgang Hildesheimer describes Tito as ‘probably the last seria in music history,’ therefore possessing ‘only a museum-piece kind of beauty’.[13] This judgement, whilst plausible a priori, is dated. London had famously rejected opera seria during the 1730s, prompting Handel’s decisive turn towards oratorio, but this was not typical of Europe. Joseph II’s unwillingness to pay the extravagant sums commanded by the stars of opera seria had been the exception even in the German-speaking world. His successor wished to define himself in opposition to the predecessor who had apparently brought the Habsburg lands so close to the precipice, not least so that some of Joseph’s reforms, particularly those relating to education and religion, might quietly be salvaged. Opera seria, far from being a throwback, might present a contrast of benevolent tradition. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, whose productions did much to reintroduce Tito to the repertoire, declared it the genre’s crowning example.[14]

However, the situation is not quite so straightforward. Tito incorporates formal aspects characteristic of comic opera (opera buffa) and French tragédie lyrique.[15] In Caterino Mazzolà’s sometimes drastic revision of the text, three acts become two and plentiful blank verse is transformed into musical ensembles, creating a first-act-finale on a scale hitherto considered appropriate only to opera buffa. Rewriting of the text was one thing, such structural transformation another. ‘Small wonder,’ as one commentator has written, that the work ‘took its imperial audience aback. Nothing like this … had ever been done to the great poet laureate of the century.’[16] Originality was not universally considered a virtue; yet, in this respect, Romantically-inclined writers such as Hildesheimer allow ‘a kind of genius,’ lauding Mozart’s opening up ‘the static tableau of these scenes and the hollow rhetoric of these puppets, … breathing into it a refreshing buffo spirit’.[17] The classical conception of opera seria as spoken theatre with additional music came into conflict, both in work and reception, with later-eighteenth-century æsthetics, which ascribed greater importance to music.

Returning to the occasion for which the work was written, Leopold’s coronation was important in affirming both the power of the monarch and of tradition, and the consent and privileges of the Bohemian Estates. Having regained control of the Austrian Netherlands, Leopold was not inclined to repeat Joseph’s refusal to recognise traditional privileges and therefore to be crowned King of Bohemia, as all of his Habsburg predecessors had been. We should nevertheless err to consider Leopold a supplicant; he had already rejected some of the Estates’ constitutional claims, not least those to represent the ‘nation’ and to determine Bohemian citizenship. It behoved the Estates to win Leopold’s favour, for no one suspected that he would die the following year, ruling for no longer than the historical Titus.

Titus Flavius Vespasianus (79-81 AD) had been acclaimed by many eighteenth-century writers as a model, proto-Enlightenment ruler. Montesquieu called him ‘the delight of the Romans’.[18] Gibbon held that, under the ‘mild administration of Titus, the Roman world enjoyed a transient felicity, and his beloved memory served to protect, above fifteen years, the vices of his brother Domitian’.[19] If only the equally short reign of Leopold-Titus had preceded Joseph-Domitian’s ‘vices’. Even when Joseph’s careful stewardship of public money is echoed, Tito’s response is gracious rather than puritanical. Publio announces the Senate’s decision to erect a temple for worship of the god Tito, to which the emperor Tito responds: ‘Romans, the only object of Tito’s desires is your love.’ The spoils of recent campaigns would be better spent aiding victims of Vesuvius’s recent eruption.

Yet we should beware positing too strong an opposition between our Habsburg Titus and Domitian. Adam Wandruszka argued that Tito glorifies the Habsburg tradition of enlightened rule, the idea of clementia austriaca, although his article says little about the work itself.[20] Joseph and Maria Theresa had identified a specifically Habsburg clemency with the retention of under-performing ministers. Drawing upon Seneca’s De clementia, specifically intended to persuade Nero of the need for imperial clemency, the transformation of an argument from utility to one based upon Christian virtue was not arduous. A broad, traditional conception of clemency as an imperial virtue encompassed availability to all citizens and willingness to discard the panoply of empire, to behave as a citizen oneself. Indeed, Tito’s words might have sprung more readily from Joseph’s mouth than Leopold’s. Tito reaffirms Habsburg tradition against the excesses of the 1780s, whilst echoing Joseph’s clemency in the traditional sense. It is not a full-scale rehabilitation of the late Emperor yet, the audience, Leopold included, would recall Joseph’s positive attributes.

This is the time-honoured tragic realm of conflict between love and duty, public and private: amor/roma. The classical, subsequently Petrarchan, dilemma is resolved by a noble, in this case imperial, character judiciously exercising will over private inclination. Tito’s momentary desire to avenge his betrayal by Sesto and Vitellia yields to the clement duty to act pro bono publico. Annio tells Vitellia: ‘Tito has command over the world and over himself.’ These two forms of power are coincident. Having avowed her love for Annio, Servilia agrees to marry Tito, should this still be his wish. Tito lauds her honesty and instructs that she yield to the one she loves, occasioning a reminder to subjects of their reciprocal duties:

Ah, would that all those

close to my throne were so sincere;

this vast empire would bring me

happiness instead of torment.

Rulers should be relieved

of the painful task

of distinguishing between

deceit and flattery.

The dotted-rhythm martial figure, which, from the Overture through the festal March, has suggested and accompanied various manifestations of Tito’s power, occurs once again, when he tells of his ‘vast empire’. This serves to remind both ruler and ruled of their responsibilities, their good fortune, and their interdependence. The elaborate development section of the Overture has already presented ‘learned’ counterpoint and fugue, which, in eighteenth-century Austrian music from Fux onwards, had been specifically identified with the House of Habsburg.[21]

Tito offers a resounding affirmation of traditional monarchy against revolution in France and revolt within the Habsburg Monarchy. Even if the internal situation upon Leopold’s accession had seemed worse than it actually was, it had definitely seemed this way – and continued to do so in retrospect.[22] Mazzolà’s revision emphasises the shame and violence of revolt, warning potentially fractious subjects that a compact imposes responsibilities upon both parties. Whereas Metastasio had been ‘able to enliven his opera with some moving talk in favour of revolution,’ Vitellia’s original references to breaking of the fatherland’s shackles and the need for ‘our century [to] have its own Brutus,’ now must be jettisoned.[23] Joseph had enlivened the Austrian Netherlands and Hungary more than enough, whilst France was producing a surplus of Brutuses. In the transformation from three acts to two, revolt is shifted to a more prominent position: the Act I finale. The conspiracy in which Sesto, owing to his passion for Vitellia, has involved himself has gone too far for either of them to halt it. Her change of heart is owed to the news that Tito would now make her Empress, Sesto’s to consideration of the Emperor’s virtue and patronage. ‘And whom do you betray? The greatest, the most just, the most merciful prince in the world, to whom you owe your power and all that you are.’ The Capitol is now, however, ablaze; rebels must answer for their treachery.

Mozart’s portrayal of the chaotic terror of rebellion is masterly. Trumpets, drums, and string tremolos underline the sudden tonal wrench to C minor, already prefigured in the dark opening of the recitative in which Sesto wrestles with his conscience. C minor is the key Haydn would employ for the Representation of Chaos that opens his Creation, leading towards the celebrated C major of ‘And there was Light’. So ultimately will Mozart’s tonal plan, though we must await the final scene for the definitive restitution of the C major Overture’s festal triumph. We are still mired in the minor mode of rebellion, and it is the Roman people, not the authorities, who provide the true voice of suffering horror. As the trumpets and drums of previous rejoicing have turned to despair, so has the populace. The off-stage chorus interjects several times in distanza the cry ‘Ah!’ upon diminished-seventh chords, furthering dissolution of the tonal stability so sturdily represented in earlier pomp and circumstance. Each cry brings with it another key in which the soloists try and fail to find resolution. After such frenetic activity and dislocation, the strange Andante with which the first act concludes – most unusual practice for an eighteenth-century operatic finale – sounds all the more funereal. ‘O black betrayal, o day of sorrow!’ intones the desolate populace, joined by the perpetrators, who believe themselves guilty of regicide. Chromatic betrayal (‘tradimento’) bursts forth forte, from chorus, soloists, and orchestra, to the dotted-rhythm of imperial power. A former stronghold sure has, it seems, been corrupted and transformed into a threat to the tonal and political peace. The finale ends in E-flat major; yet, punctured by chromaticism and darkened by dolorous instrumental colours, it is a major tonality as sombre and resigned as one might conceive: E-flat first and foremost as the relative major of C minor.

These conflicts are resolved in the final scene. Vitellia’s rondò, in which she resolves to seek the Emperor’s mercy, leads directly into Tito’s entrance into ‘a magnificent square before a vast amphitheatre’. Delivered from misfortune, he is acclaimed by the Romans as ‘the thought and love of the heavens and gods’. This magnificent chorus has been described as:

… the greatest compliment ever paid to the aspirations of Metastasian opera to idealise the worth and dignity of those who hold temporal power. … the chorus and the sovereign it celebrates assume a far-reaching scope of vision that extends back over the preceding darkness, as if the whole course of Vitellia’s agonised self-searching lay already within Tito’s ken – a benign omniscience that in The Magic Flute is invested in Sarastro.[24]

Indeed, Tito, like Sarastro, lays claim to omniscience, even if both fall short of that divine quality. Rebellion having been suppressed and Sesto having confessed his guilt, Tito has resolved upon clemency rather than adhering to the letter of the law, yet this is at first known only to himself and to the audience. Trumpets, drums, and the martial rhythm of imperial power appear for the first time in the second act. On the verge of announcing Sesto’s pardon, Tito is confronted with Vitellia, arrived to confess her guilt. Having despaired that he will ever ‘find a loyal soul,’ he resolves that his mercy must prove more constant than the treachery of others. ‘Let it be known in Rome,’ Tito resolves, ‘that I am the same and that I know everything, absolve everyone, and forget everything.’

This is a public pronouncement of clemency ancient and modern. Leopold had insisted on Beccaria’s presence on the commission for the revision of Joseph’s 1787 draconian Strafgesetzbuch.[25] Beccaria, himself a Habsburg subject, had argued against Tito-style absolution on account of its arbitrary nature. Clemency was ‘the most beautiful prerogative of the throne, … the most desirable endowment of sovereignty’. So far so good. ‘But one ought to bear in mind that clemency is a virtue of the lawgiver and not of the laws’ executor, that it ought to shine in the legal code and not in particular judgements.’ To pardon was to make ‘a public decree of impunity,’ through ‘a private act of unenlightened kind-heartedness’.[26] Whilst this constitutes a rational assessment of the amor/roma dilemma, the Enlightenment house boasted many salons, some less rationalistic than others. These might hold a strong political interest in asserting that the quality of mercy should not be strained, that Seneca’s justification for leniency regarding punishment of an inferior was not obsolete.

A prince’s personal justice upheld both understandings of clemency better than a modern state’s indifferent administration. Frederick the Great had intervened in judicial proceedings to correct what he perceived to be an unjust verdict in the Miller Arnold case. Such intervention seemed less of a ‘judicial catastrophe’ to contemporaries, at least outside Berlin, than to subsequent historians, given Frederick’s ‘strong suspicions of a socially lopsided jurisprudence’.[27] To respond to direct petitions and to grant a personal audience, as Frederick had in this case and Joseph II had in many others, was far from an outmoded form of communication between monarch and subject. Modern clemency was at worst a minor sin whose advantages in a particular case might readily outweigh ideological objections. A touch of personal monarchy, Hohenzollern or Habsburg, tempered suspicion of a bureaucratic machine-state and reminded subjects of the monarch’s benevolent power. Princeps legibus solutus est. Only Tito – this ‘great, generous soul’ – has the power of clemency, just as only Frederick could have delivered his celebrated fiat against the insubordination of the Prussian Kammergericht. The prince’s majesty is maintained and enhanced; there is more to Enlightened conceptions of law than codification and strict observance thereof.

This final ensemble restores the C major tonality of prior rejoicing, the dark chromaticism of revolutionary chaos replaced by bright and sturdy diatonic harmony, tonic and dominant so prevalent that even the Beethoven of the Fifth Symphony’s finale might have blanched. Trumpets and drums once again re-present the panoply of imperial power and rejoicing. Tito shuns praise and honour to declare that, should the day come ‘when the good of Rome is no longer my sole care,’ the eternal gods should end his days. Selflessness can serve and increase power – and vice versa. This is the great lesson taught in Tito’s school for ruler and ruled.

IV

Die Zauberflöte is a different beast: a Singspiel and a Zauberoper. What does this mean in terms of structure? Not much in itself, for these forms are less clearly defined than opera seria. By the late eighteenth century, Singspiel usually entailed a work in the vernacular, combining musical numbers and spoken dialogue. Mozart, however, simply used the word Oper to refer to both Die Entführung and Die Zauberflöte. The latter’s hybrid character enables it to draw without fear from almost every operatic and instrumental genre; but the miraculous synthesis that emerges can only be ascribed to Mozart. Wagner, for whom this constituted the first true German opera, remarked admiringly: ‘This is folklorish. If it can be said of us Germans that we have no art, we can at least reply that we do have a folk tradition; art stands midway between academicism and folklore, for there have really been no genuine artists since the Greeks.’[28]

The clearest example of this is the simplest form on offer: that of five strophic songs, which are nonetheless often varied with great subtlety. It is no coincidence that two of these songs are sung by the Naturmensch, Papageno, and that he is a duettist in another. This does not straightforwardly relate to social status, however, since other examples are Sarastro’s ‘In diesem heil’gen Hallen,’ and his aria with chorus, ‘O Isis und Osiris’. Nobility as well as naïveté can reside in simplicity; great art, moreover, can lie in the appearance of simplicity, often deriving from musical sources most ‘unfolklorish’.

As befits a Singspiel, Italian-style recitativo secco is avoided, but not only in favour of spoken dialogue. Some of the work’s most ‘expressive’ dramma per musica comes through a highly-developed style of orchestral recitative, in which so much of the drama lies in the orchestra that one is tempted to look forward to Wagner as much as to discern origins in Gluck’s reform operas. The recitative exchange in the Act One finale between Tamino and his priestly interlocutor presents a prophetic dialectic in which vocal line and orchestra increasingly influence and come to resemble each other. Even the staid Second Priest’s vocal line occasionally blossoms into arioso; for Tamino, the more dynamic character, this happens more frequently. Introducing a choral element into this exchange, Mozart further breaks down those often-tedious boundaries, omnipresent in earlier opera seria and yet so foreign to the heyday of Venetian opera, between recitative, aria, and chorus. This is not unique to Die Zauberflöte; yet it is more advanced than in Mozart’s coronation opera, which, for all its radical revision of seria form, could never have progressed quite so boldly. In restoring opera’s Monteverdian dignity and anticipating its Wagnerian destiny, there can be no question of a primo musico or prima donna constituting the main attraction.

Adorno suggests why this might be so:

Prior to the emancipation of the subject, art was undoubtedly in a certain sense more immediately social than it was afterward. Its autonomy, its growing independence from society, was a function of the bourgeois consciousness of freedom that was itself bound up with the social structure. Prior to the emergence of this consciousness, art certainly stood in opposition to social domination and its mores, but not with an awareness of its own independence.[29]

One might cautiously say that Tito is ‘old’, and Die Zauberflöte is ‘new’. Tito stands in opposition to an emerging world of commercial self-interest, in favour of a modified traditionalism. Die Zauberflöte presents what Adorno viewed as the greater integration of bourgeois art into society, the ‘influx of experiences that are no longer forced into a priori genres, the requirement of constituting form out of these experiences, that is, from below. This is “realistic” in purely æsthetic terms, regardless of content.’[30] Hence the Romantics believed Beethoven to have burst formal, schematic forms; this, however, preceded Beethoven, the owl of Minerva spreading its wings only at dusk. Transitions are more blurred than has often been recognised, but they do not vanish completely. What has often been overlooked is that the musico-historical impetus originates perhaps as much in ‘aristocratic’ tragédie lyrique – Gluck and, beyond him, Rameau – as in ‘progressive’, ‘bourgeois’ opera buffa.[31] Wagner commented:

Mozart is the founder of German declamation – what fine humanity resounds in the Priest’s replies to Tamino! Think how stiff such high priests are in Gluck. … consider this text, which was meant to be a farce, and the theatre for which it was written, and compare what was written before Mozart’s time … – on the one side the wretched German Singspiel, on the other the ornate Italian opera – one is amazed by the soul he managed to breathe into such a text.[32]

Wagner unsurprisingly found the birth of German declamation in French tragedy impossible to swallow in 1870, but he was otherwise aware of the precedents or lack of them for Mozart.

The musico-dramatic emergence of the subject is not universal. Nietzsche would write memorably of the ‘type of man [who] needs to believe in an unbiased “subject” with freedom of choice, because he has an instinct of self-preservation and self-affirmation in which every lie is sanctified’.[33] Papageno is not wicked, but lacks the cultivation necessary to attain such freedom. He will live a contented if un-exalted life without it: clemency less magnificent than Tito’s, yet still clemency, for transgression of Papageno’s vow of silence is treated leniently. The rhetoric of the subject is nevertheless reiterated throughout by Sarastro, his priests, and those who will be converted, to the entire spectrum of morality: from the Queen of the Night and Monostatos, through Papageno, to Tamino and Pamina. The Queen is driven by passion: she is ‘a proud woman,’ as Sarastro admonishes Pamina. He repeats this phrase at the beginning of the Second Act, elucidating: ‘That woman hopes to bewitch through deception and superstition, and to destroy the sure foundation of our temple.’ Tamino, he continues, will help strengthen the order and, once initiated, will himself reward virtue and punish vice. The celebrated dreimalige Akkord, its ritual, almost Brucknerian silences as crucial as the chords themselves, is intoned, reminding us that Freemasonry informs this Enlightenment individualism.

Indeed, silence is very important throughout Die Zauberflöte. The Three Boys counsel Tamino, successfully, and Papageno, unsuccessfully, to observe it. Mozart told Constanze that the usual numbers were encored, ‘but what gives me most pleasure is the silent approval,’ indicating ‘how this opera is becoming more and more esteemed’. One should not exaggerate, but this might represent a harbinger of Romantic, even bourgeois, attitudes towards how one ought to behave. It contrasts with Mozart’s report from the same letter of tremendous applause during the final Prague performance of Tito.[34] The mystical importance of silence in Die Zauberflöte suggests that it is the only Mozart opera truly to exhibit signs of German Romanticism. One might argue for a precedent in the instruction to Gluck’s Orpheus not to speak in Hades; this is not, however, absolute silence, but a character’s silence, relying upon the extended communicative power of music. Both forms are important in Die Zauberflöte. Poetry, incorporating but not limited to reason, would be mankind’s tutor, drawing sustenance from mystical currents of eighteenth-century culture. Mesmerism had informed the comedy of Così fan tutte. Now the hermetic, esoteric mysteries of Rosicrucianism, an order of celebrated secrecy, might move Enlightenment beyond mere logical deduction to discovery of hidden meanings comprehensible only to initiates. Alchemy could be spiritual as well as physical; the goal of Tamino’s trials of purification is spiritual perfection, even divine wisdom.

The Queen and her cronies fall physically and tonally through a C minor chromatic sequence: ‘Our power is shattered; we are all plunged into eternal night!’ Mozart’s music then turns decisively to the tonic of E-flat as Sarastro guides us into the final chorus, declaring: ‘The sun’s rays chase away the night; the hypocrite’s devious power is vanquished.’ So far this seems to represent a straightforward victory of Light over Darkness; in a sense, it is. However, the chorus sings of strength (Stärke) victorious, crowning with its ‘eternal crown’ not the power of reason, whether Verstand or Vernunft, but Schönheit und Weisheit: ‘Beauty and Wisdom’. Reason has not vanished; it is aufgehoben. The words ‘Weisheit … Schönheit … Stärke,’ occur in the St John Masonic ritual, and form the central triangle of the Thirty-third Degree of the Masons’ so-called Scottish Ritual, of partly Rosicrucian inspiration, its motto Ordo ab Chao.[35] To construct order out of chaos is now more of an artistic deed than Enlightened Absolutism would have held. Tito is no artist or magician; Sarastro is, if far from a perfect example. An unidentified writer, perhaps Hegel or Schelling, wrote in 1796 or 1797 that the idea uniting all others should be beauty. ‘The highest act of reason is an æsthetic act since it comprises all ideas, … truth and goodness are fraternally united only in beauty.’ Poetry would thereby ‘gain a higher dignity, … again become … the teacher of humanity’. Not only the ‘great multitude’ needed a ‘religion of the senses,’ but the philosopher too.[36]

Sarastro must therefore learn from his mistakes and from the example of others, that he might create order out of his own chaos. His role in acquiring Pamina appears murky: taken for her own ‘protection’, she is not free to leave, and it is hinted that he may have had amorous intent. Pamina and Tamino – a prince, but crucially, in an echo of traditional clemency, ein Mensch – therefore purify not only themselves, but also Sarastro; their love is divinely ordained and thus trumps any alternative Sarastro might have entertained. This is Enlightened in that it would purify the mythical realm, but proto-Romantic in its conception of love. Schleiermacher would soon argue that love, not the rational self-interest of Enlightenment utilitarianism, was the most powerful engine of human activity. The individual must constantly look to the rest of mankind, not least in order to ‘maintain consciousness of his selfhood’. ‘Without love,’ Schleiermacher claimed, ‘the dreadful disproportion between giving and receiving will soon unhinge the mind in its first efforts at self-realisation, driving it from its proper course.’[37] The raison d’état of Tito renouncing his beloved Berenice in favour of Rome appertains, by contrast, to another age. Tamino’s loss of Pamina is temporary, a stage in his trials; it is never their purpose. Thomas Bauman accurately observes that Mozart’s music renders Tamino a much more reflective character than Schikaneder’s libretto would otherwise suggest.[38] From his Portrait Aria onwards, Tamino is no cipher, but a character of great nobility and integrity, who will attain greater heights through initiation into the order’s mysteries.

In Die Zauberflöte, the agency of historical subjects is stronger than in Tito’s opera. Nevertheless, there remains a striking similarity, for Tito as well as Sarastro may be seen, to quote Paul Nettl, to embody the ‘all-forgiving … principles of Masonic tolerance’. Whilst the impetus for its more extended equivalent in Die Zauberflöte came more directly from composer and librettist, it is worth remembering that ‘those who had the last word concerning the choice of the subject might also have been motivated by these same thoughts: the Counts Thun, Canal, Pachta,’ et al., were all Freemasons, ‘who, through their vows, were obliged to propagate humanitarian ideals whenever possible’.[39] Such men also comprised a good number of the first audience.

Ignaz von Born

The authorities’ attitude towards the Craft was uncertain. Although Francis I had been a Mason, Maria Theresa – who may have had something of the Queen of the Night about her – repressed the movement after his death. Joseph II instituted a more liberal regime for the first five years of his sole rule, but his 1785 Masonic Patent rationalised the number of lodges and imposed severe limits on membership. This led many, though not Mozart, to resign from the order. One who did was Ignaz von Born, master of Haydn’s lodge, ‘Zur wahren Eintracht,’ and dedicatee of Mozart’s cantata, Die Maurerfreude, KV 471. Born has often been claimed as a model for Sarastro. Leopold kept his cards close to his chest, whilst many of his advisors were actively hostile. Confusion persisted until Francis II closed down the lodges in 1794-5.

If we should beware too emphatic a Masonic interpretation of Tito, there are nevertheless clear correspondences between Tito’s Act I aria, before which he asks what is left to him if deprived of the ability to show generosity, and Sarastro’s Act II ‘Within these sacred halls, revenge has no place’. Both of these ‘mercy’ or ‘forgiveness’ arias are in moderately slow quadruple time (Andante and Larghetto), and the harmonic contours of their opening bars are identical. Given that Tito is a tenor and Sarastro a bass, the vocal lines are surprisingly similar too. Where Tito’s form of address is monarchical, Sarastro’s is fraternal: ‘Within these sacred walls, where man [Mensch] loves man, no traitor can lurk, for enemies are forgiven. He who does not delight in this teaching is undeserving of the name of Man.’ This difference should not surprise, however, given the divergence of dramatic context and audience, and Sarastro’s brotherhood remains unashamedly autocratic. Tito also wishes that no traitor should lurk in his kingdom, that men should forgive their enemies; this is secured by clement example, engendering moral improvement in Sesto and even in Vitellia. Just exercise of power and the constitution of a just society evoke a strikingly similar response in both works.

Sarastro and Tito are both lauded in their respective first-act-finales for their dispensation of justice. Both show forgiveness, although ambiguously in Sarastro’s case, when one considers his treatment of Monostatos. (Perhaps different rules apply to Moors.) According to the contemporary Charakter und Eigenschaften eines echten Freimaurers, an initiate ‘should have an honest, true, humanity-loving, tender, and feeling heart, be sympathetic to the misfortunes of others,’ and evince neither hatred nor vengefulness. This is not exclusively Masonic. One might say the same about a Christian – which is often the point. What may subsequently have been taken as opponents, competitors even, were not necessarily thus considered by contemporaries, certainly not in Mozart’s case. Indeed, the first point of the Charakter und Eigenschaften was that a member should be ‘a freeborn man, raised in the Christian religion, and not under twenty years old’.[40]

A significant difference between our two works relates to the social hierarchy presented through the characters. Stark differentiation was unlikely to arise in an opera seria dealing with no one of less than noble rank, but hierarchy is clearly delineated in Die Zauberflöte. Papageno and Papagena are the humblest characters. Depicted in straightforward, often folk-like music, they will lead a decent life together. They will never be admitted, however, to Sarastro’s order. Instead, they will find domestic bliss with ‘first a little Papageno… then a little Papagena,’ and so forth. They do not reappear in the final scene, having nothing to do with the initiates’ future.

At the other extreme is the Queen of the Night. She is essentially a seria character, kept apart from ‘popular theatre’ aspects of the action. Her music puts one more in mind of Idomeneo’s furious Electra than of any intervening character, with the possible exception of Vitellia. All three characters are not only seekers after power, but are women who have some degree of justification to their claims; their lust for power nevertheless leads them to abandon reason, to become hysterical. The richness of the Queen’s orchestral recitative is in keeping with seria tradition rather than formally innovative as a Gluckian development of opera buffa; it introduces what she is about to sing, the presentation of an emotion or decision, rather than furthering the action. Yet her arias paint a different picture. As early as Idomeneo, Mozart had displayed impatience with the formal imperative of recapitulation; but here, as Erik Smith noted, ‘vestigial recapitulation … becomes the rule’. Even in her Second Act aria, the return of the tonic D minor presents not a repeat of the opening, which in fact never returns, but a figure extracted from the second subject.[41] Ferocity is not denied but heightened by such economy; there is a dialectical relationship between restraint befitting royal dignity, and a constraint that verges upon Romantic dissolution of formal bonds. One might expect to find formalism more evident in the classicising Tito. However, whereas both the Queen and Electra are dispensed with immediately prior to their works’ celebratory final scenes, Vitellia’s rondò leads into the concluding rejoicing. She has shown contrition, is shown mercy, and participates for justifiable dramatic reasons. Relative fluidity of genre is highlighted by the fact that there is a more buffo character to this villainess’s music than to that of her Zauberflöte counterpart.

It is worth dealing here with charges of misogyny. There is certainly an unreconstructed attitude within Sarastro’s order towards women, but we should not confuse characters’ voices with that of the composer. For instance, the priests’ duet at the beginning of Act II both marks both a stage in Tamino’s journey –something to be overcome – and presents them as objects of ridicule. Anyone taking at face value the warning ‘Guard yourself from women’s tricks; this is the first duty of the Order!’ would have been minded to do so anyway. Mozart’s frivolous setting suggests no portentous message, but rather a divertissement prior to the real trials Tamino must undergo. If the Queen is driven by her passions, Pamina remains the very model of feminine Bürgerlichkeit. It is unreasonable to expect her to accept Tamino’s silence towards her, for unlike Tamino and Papageno, she is not informed of the nature of her trials. Unlike Papageno, however, she succeeds, and is admitted on equal terms with Tamino, which must have given a jolt to Masons in the audience. Born, in his 1784 essay, Ueber die Mysterien der Aegyptier, had specifically excluded women. Egyptian priests, he argued, had doubted female discretion with good reason.[42] The Priests heed Born and Egypt; Mozart does not. A role for women was not unprecedented: Parisian Freemasons had created a subordinate order for women, ‘Les Loges d’Adoption’.[43] There was no precedent, however, for raising Pamina to the level whereat she and Tamino finally appear bedecked in priestly robes, subordinate only to Sarastro. No longer her mother’s daughter, she seems set to become Queen of the Light. Tamino and Pamina together, as man and wife, have overcome both the deceptions of the feminine world of the Night and the hidebound traditions of Sarastro’s brotherhood. It would be exaggerated to see those two worlds as equivalent; Pamina renews the latter, whereas Tamino eschews the former. Nevertheless, the work recognises that, to paraphrase Lampedusa, for at least some things to stay the same, some will have to change.

Both finales restore their works’ opening tonalities: C major in Tito and E-flat major in Die Zauberflöte. Both works also allot a special role to C minor: the fundamental tonality’s tonic minor in the former work, and its relative minor in the latter. In Die Zauberflöte, C minor has been associated with darkness and death from the very first scene, in which Tamino enters, pursued by a great serpent. Things are not quite what they seem, however, for although the Three Ladies slay the serpent with their javelins, they threaten to send the novice prince along the wrong path, that of darkness and therefore ultimately of death. As James Stevens Curl explains, the serpent is a symbol of Freemasonry, slain by the ‘Three Veiled Ladies (veiled because Enlightenment cannot reach them)’. Tamino is terrified of the serpent, the crucial points being that ‘his terror is due to ignorance,’ and ‘the ladies show their true colours right at the start by attacking the Craft and trying to annex the young man for their cause.’[44] Another danger and potential triumph comes early in the Act Two Finale, with the archaic contrapuntal severity of the Bachian C minor chorale prelude for the Two Armoured Men. Startlingly for Catholic Vienna, though less so for ecumenical – or heretical – Freemasonry, this employs the melody of a Protestant hymn, a setting of Luther’s metrical version of Psalm 12, ‘Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein’. This closely corresponds to the Armoured Men’s talk of elemental purification:

He who travels along these paths so full of troubles is purified by fire, water, air, and earth. If he can overcome his fear of death, he will raise himself heavenwards from the earth; he will be enlightened, at this level, to dedicate himself wholly to the mysteries of Isis. 

This is more than a benevolent ruler’s clemency. On the one hand, we see the agency of the enlightened subject, and on the other, the abstraction of general principles of benevolence. Tamino and Pamina succeed in walking, ‘by the power of music, in joy through death’s dark night,’ to reach the ‘joyful moment’ in which ‘the joy of Isis is accorded to us’. They bring us to an interim chorus of triumph in the tonic major, also a key of Light, although not our final destination. Now the chorus from within invites them to enter the Temple itself.  Mozart’s symbolism of Darkness and Light is clear in the final transformative scene-change from the C minor machinations of the Queen, the Three Ladies, and the renegade Monostatos, to the E-flat celebration of the failure of their attempt to destroy the Temple of Wisdom. The Masonic tonality of three flats represents two sides of the same coin. Enlightenment surpasses yet incorporates the Enlightenment. One can only attain the wisdom of beauty, truth, and enlightenment when there remains an opposing force; for what could Light mean without Darkness? About as much as culture could mean without power, or power without culture. Beauty, truth, and enlightenment further the cause of social, cultural, and political advancement – but not for all. Such is the dialectic of enlightenment.

V

Both works affirm hierarchy; in this sense, both are ‘aristocratic’. In the case of Tito, there remains a paradox, for the work’s initial ‘courtly audience rejected or looked indifferently upon … [it], whilst the bourgeois [bürgerlich] public around 1800 emphatically approved’.[45] The social structure had not been transformed within a decade, but the audience differed significantly from that at the coronation première. Bürgerlich approval was owed in no small part to the extent to which opera buffa had informed the spirit and style of Mozart’s coronation opera. London presented the first performance outside Germany and, more surprisingly, its first production of any Mozart opera in 1806. Yet by the 1830s, fashions had changed across Europe; Tito would be revived only occasionally, as Hildesheimer’s museum-piece.

Mozart’s da Ponte operas, especially Figaro, evinced a different attitude from both works considered here. Beaumarchais’ social criticism is toned down but still present. The servant’s triumph over his master is explicit, as is that of the wronged wife over her husband, even if one suspects that the Count will fight another folle journée. Perhaps this has led many commentators to view Die Zauberflöte either as standing in this line, or else as an apolitical fairy-tale, whilst skirting past Tito as Mozart’s late seria-Cinderella. Yet, whilst there remains a case for differentiating between the two in terms of a modified opposition between ‘aristocratic’ and ‘bourgeois’, this is not it. For instance, having described Tito, otherwise accorded scant attention, as ‘a justification and celebration of the monarchy,’ Brigid Brophy contrasted Die Zauberflöte as a justification of ‘the proletariat’.[46] Mozart never sympathised with such a social class, nor with anything approximating thereto, reporting dismissively of Joseph II’s inclusion of the ‘Viennese rabble’ (Pöbel) at a Schönbrunn Ball. Such rabble, he wrote, would always remain just that.[47] The social conditioning of Tamino and Pamina aids their initiation, just as that of Tito has prepared him to be Emperor; likewise, Papageno’s lowly birth helps deny him constancy, the cultural accomplishment requisite for admission to the order. This is neither lamented nor lauded, but presented as the natural state of affairs. Abuse of position is, hardly surprisingly, abhorred in both works, but not position itself. The relationship between culture and power is as pronounced a theme in Mozart’s Singspiel as in his final opera seria.

Johann Christoph Gottsched

The influential Leipzig professor of poetry and philosophy, Johann Christoph Gottsched, instructed that the poet must first decide upon the moral claim to be advanced by his work. Everything else – plot, characters, and so forth – followed from this central thesis.[48] It is not unduly fanciful to see this æsthetic applying to, perhaps even influencing, both operas. The message of Die Zauberflöte is Enlightened and Romantic. Light’s victory over Darkness presents a strong rather than a weak defence of hierarchy, as consonant with Pope as with Novalis. Whereas Tito is very much of the eighteenth century, standing towards the end of an ‘aristocratic’ line, Die Zauberflöte is ultimately more the work of its time, in that it looks back and looks forward. The former work is classicistic, the latter so timely, so rare, that it qualifies as classical.

Blanning, whilst acknowledging his debt to Habermas, is rightly critical of his historical understanding.[49] When dealing with particular artworks, it may be more helpful to think in terms closer to Adorno. Not only might the history be more accurate, but the works themselves may yield some of their historical secrets. In Die Zauberflöte, the historical subject and individual freedom seem to constitute reality; if Kant could never prove the moral law’s logical necessity, Mozart appears effortlessly to demonstrate it. Johann Jacob Breitinger had formulated, in his 1740 Critische Dichtkunst, a literary theory of the wondrous and its relationship with both the natural world and the human mind. Imagination was the crucial faculty in literary composition, creative rather than imitative. This would better enable literature to fulfil its role as a ‘school for the reader,’ promoting truth and virtue, and punishing vice.[50] Wieland suggested, in his 1789 preface to the third volume of Dschinnistan, that fairy tales could bring one as close to the ‘palace of Wahrheit’ as any other form of literature.[51] Mozart showed that a fairy-tale opera, its libretto indebted to Wieland’s collection, could do better still. It is no coincidence that Romantics such as E.T.A. Hoffmann considered Mozart almost as much as Beethoven to be one of them, for Die Zauberflöte shows how art might vanquish antinomy. ‘Mozart,’ Hoffmann declared, ‘calls for the superhuman, the wondrous element’.[52] ‘The operas that most purely satisfy the requirements of the genre,’ Adorno would claim, ‘almost always correct myth through music.’ Die Zauberflöte thus witnessed and exemplified opera’s participation in Enlightenment ‘as a total societal movement’.[53] If late Beethoven would tragically reveal that what was necessary in terms of human freedom was or had become impossible, Mozart’s Zauberoper signalled the wondrous moment of its dramatic immanence.

          

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* This was first published in Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century, eds H.M. Scott and B.P. Simms (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2007), pp.325-47. I have resisted the temptation to make any changes, other than to correct factual errors.

[1] Quoted in J.A. Rice, La clemenza di Tito (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 11.

[2] Letter of 10 January 1791 in the Vienna Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Sämmelbande, Kart. 20, quoted in J.A. Rice, ‘Giovanni de Gamerra,’ Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 27 February 2006), http://www.grovemusic.com.

[3] T.C.W. Blanning, The culture of power and the power of culture: old regime Europe 1660-1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 178-9.

[4] J.A. Rice, Antonio Salieri and Viennese opera (University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1998), p. 507.

[5] Rice, La clemenza di Tito, p. 5.

[6] E.O. Deutsch (ed.), Mozart, a documentary biography, trs E. Blom, P. Branscombe, and J. Noble (London: Black, 1965), p. 405.

[7] See letter to Constanze Mozart, 7-8 October 1791, in W.A. Bauer and O.E. Deutsch (eds.) Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Gesamtasusgabe, 7 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1962-75), vol. IV, p. 157.

[8] Ibid., p. 154.

[9] See P. Branscombe, Die Zauberflöte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 67-86.

[10] Letter to Constanze, 14 October 1791, in Briefe, vol. IV, pp. 161-2.

[11] The term was infrequently used at the time; dramma per musica is the usual description on printed libretti.

[12] D. Heartz, ‘Mozart and his Italian contemporaries,’ in Mozart’s operas, ed. with contributing essays by T. Bauman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 301.

[13] W. Hildesheimer, Mozart, tr. M. Faber (London: Dent, 1982), pp. 308-9.

[14] Quoted in D. Borchmeyer, Mozart oder die Entdeckung der Liebe Insel (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 2005), p. 220.

[15] On problematical aspects of the commonplace distinction between buffa and seria, see Heartz, ‘Mozart and his Italian contemporaries,’ pp. 299-300.

[16] M.P. McClymonds, ‘Mozart’s “La clemenza di Tito” and opera seria in Florence as a reflection of

Leopold II’s musical taste,’ Mozart-Jahrbuch 1984/85, 66.

[17] Hildesheimer, Mozart, p. 307.

[18] C.L. de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, ed. G. Truc (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1954), p. 83.

[19] E. Gibbon, The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, 2 vols. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), vol. I, p. 30.

[20] A. Wandruszka, ‘Die “Clementia Austriaca” und der aufgeklärte Absolutismus. Zum politischen und ideellen Hintergrund von “La clemenza di Tito”,’ Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, 31 (1976), 186-93.

[21] See M. Bent and W. Kirkendale, Fugue and fugato in Rococo and Classical chamber music (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979).

[22] Blanning, drawing on Pavel Mitrofanov’s inaccessible, fragmentary biography of Leopold (Leopold II avstriiskii: vneshniaia politika (Petrograd, 1916)), argues that the threat of disintegration was exaggerated. (‘An old but new biography of Leopold II,’ in T.C.W. Blanning and D. Cannadine (eds), History and biography: essays in honour of Derek Beales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 62.) See also M.Z. Mayer, ‘Leopold II, the Prussian threat, and the Peace of Sistova, 1790-1791,’ International History Review, 26 (2004), 473-514.

[23] Rice, La clemenza, pp. 40-41.

[24] T. Bauman, ‘At the north gate: instrumental music in Die Zauberflöte,’ in Heartz, Mozart’s operas, p. 296.

[25] A. Wandruszka, Leopold II: Erzherzog von Österreich, Grossherzog von Toskana, König von Ungarn und Böhmen, Römischer Kaiser, 2 vols. (Vienna and Munich: Verlag Herold, 1963-5), vol. II, p. 142.

[26] C. Beccaria, On crimes and punishments and other writings, tr. R. Davies, eds. R. Bellamy et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 111-12.

[27] D.M. Luebke, ‘Frederick the Great and the celebrated case of the Millers Arnold (1770-1779): a reappraisal,’ Central European History, 32 (1999), 380, 401.

[28] M. Gregor-Dellin and D. Mack (eds.), Cosima Wagner’s diaries, tr. G. Skelton, 2 vols. (London: Collins, 1978–80), 8 March 1872.

[29] T.W. Adorno, Aesthetic theory, eds. G. Adorno and R. Tiedemann, tr. R. Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone, 1997), p. 225.

[30] Ibid., p. 225.

[31] During Rameau’s lifetime, composers and librettists preferred the term tragédie en musique. The arrival in Paris of Gluck’s operas during the 1770s definitively changed this. See G. Sadler, ‘Tragédie en musique,’ Grove Music Online.

[32] Gregor-Dellin and Mack (eds.), Cosima Wagner’s diaries, 29 May 1870.  

[33] F. Nietzsche, On the genealogy of morality, tr. C. Diethe, ed. K. Ansell-Pearson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 29.

[34] 7-8 October 1791, in Briefe, vol. IV, p. 157.

[35] H.C.R. Landon, 1791: Mozart’s last year (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), pp. 128-30.

[36] Anon., ‘The oldest systematic programme of German idealism,’ in The early political writings of the German Romantics, tr. F.C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 4-5.

[37] F.D.E. Schleiermacher, ‘Monologues,’ in Beiser (ed.), Early political writings, p. 179.

[38] Bauman, ‘At the north gate,’ p. 281.

[39] P. Nettl, Mozart in Böhmen (Prague: Verlag Neumann, 1938), pp. 184-5.

[40] E. Grossegger, Freimaurerei und Theater, 1770-1800: Freimaurerdramen an den k.k. priviligierten Theatern in Wien (Vienna: Böhlau, 1981), p. 11.

[41] E. Smith, ‘The music,’ in Branscombe, Die Zauberflöte, p. 115.

[42] Branscombe, Die Zauberflöte, p. 23.

[43] See R. le Forestier, Maçonnerie féminine et loges académiques (Milan: Arche, 1979).

[44] J.S. Curl, The art and architecture of Freemasonry (London: Batsford, 1991), p. 143.

[45] Borchmeyer, Mozart, pp. 221-2.

[46] B. Brophy, Mozart the dramatist: the value of his operas to him, to his age and to us, revised edn (London: Libris, 1988), p. 231.

[47] Letter to Leopold Mozart, 5 December 1781, in Briefe, III, p. 178.

[48] J.C. Gottsched, Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1962), p. 161.

[49] Blanning, Culture of power, pp. 5-14.

[50] J.A. McCarthy, ‘Philosophy and literature in the German Enlightenment,’ in Philosophy and German literature, 1700-1990, ed. N. Saul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 38-9, 44.

[51] C.M. Wieland, ‘Dschinnistan,’ in Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1909-), part I, vol. XVIII, p. 12.

[52] E.T.A. Hoffmann, ‘Beethoven’s instrumental music,’ tr. O. Strunk, in J. Hermand and M. Gilbert (eds.) German essays on music (New York: Continuum, 1994), p. 61.

[53] T.W. Adorno, ‘Bourgeois opera,’ in Sound figures, tr. R. Livingstone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 21.