Volume 22, Number 19 · November 27, 1975
Playing with 'The Magic Flute'
By Robert Craft
The Magic Flute
a film directed by Ingmar Bergman. with the Swedish Stage Broadcasting Network Symphony, conducted by Eric Ericson. Sung and spoken in Swedish, with English subtitles
A Preface To "The Magic Flute"
by E.M. Batley
Dennis Dobson (London), 175 pp., £3.00
"The Magic Flute," Masonic Opera
by Jacques Chailley, translated by Herbert Weinstock
Knopf, 352 pp., $10.00
Three Mozart Operas
by R.B. Moberly
Dodd, Mead, 303 pp., $7.50
The libretto of The Magic Flute, once dismissed as absurd and undeserving of serious scrutiny, is today overmined for buried 'meaning' and 'significance,' and often uncritically praised as a 'faultless dramatic structure.' Nor will a balance between Philistine ridicule and sanctimonious approbation be found in the latest spate of books about the opera, which are far more concerned with the interpretation of the libretto than with the musico-dramatic entity. In all likelihood the inadvertent as well as the intentional enigmas of the plot, along with the perennial controversy over the authorship of the libretto, will continue to provide a rich quarry for musicologists. But two other particular mysteries envelop The Magic Flute: the question of the representation of Freemasonry, which some believe was more important to Mozart than his Catholicism, and the seeming coincidence of death as a theme of the opera and Mozart's own tragic end after he completed the work.
Review, 4459 words
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