Max Derrickson

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart     (born Salzburg, 1756; died Vienna, 1791)

Overture to The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) K. 620

The summer of 1791 found Mozart facing probable financial ruin and family heartache.  His wife was sickly and pregnant and had gone to Baden-Badenwith their five-year old son to “take the cures.”  The expenses of this, not to mention preparing for their new baby, necessitated Mozart toward financial collapse which he was trying to stave off by borrowing ever increasing loans from his fellow Mason, Michael Puchberg.  To make matters even more bleak, Vienna appeared to have turned its back on Mozart with its mystifyingly cold reception to his last opera Don Giovanni, and although in that summer Mozart received two commissions – one from Prague for the opera La clemenza di Tito, and one very famous one, shrouded in mystery, for a Requiem Mass – commissions in Vienna were in steady decline.  Further, after his departure from Salzburg, subsequent royal appointments in his new home ofVienna, which would have provided a comfortable patronage, just never seemed to materialize for Mozart.  He had to resort to giving recitals, teaching private lessons to spoiled Viennese children, and composing scads of smaller instrumental works to peddle about the city.  What Vienna wanted, and what Mozart needed to change his fortunes, was an operatic “hit.”

But there was a glint of hope.
[. . .]

The circumstances surrounding the creation of The Magic Flute gave Mozart and Schikaneder a kind of “odd man out” espirit d’corps.  Schikaneder was a self proclaimed singer-dancer-playwright-impresario-etcetera who had become the manager of the Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, a venue for entertaining the common folks with less-than high brow acts – a bit like Broadway shows mixed with vaudeville antics.  Singspiels were wildly popular in Vienna and were like operettas in their lightheartedness, including a good deal of spoken dialogue.  Key to their popularity was that they provided a great vehicle for clowning on stage.  Mozart, of course, was desperate and willing to try anything.  Their kinship, apart from their mutual feelings of being snubbed by the Viennese elite, was also owed to their Masonic brotherhood, a secret society of enlightenment that was viewed in Mozart’s day as hostile to the Roman Catholic Church and even the State.  It’s no surprise, then, to find that the plot of The Magic Flute, though clothed in fairy tales, is an allegorical story pitting the Masons against the Church, or perhaps against the late Austrian Empress Maria Theresa who condemned the secret society.
[. . .]

The story takes place inEgypt(thought to be where the Masons began), sometime around 1300 BC, and revolves around the young and handsome Prince Tamino.  While hunting he finds himself entangled in an odd situation: nearly killed by a giant snake, he’s rescued by Three Ladies who are in the service of the Queen of the Night.
[. . .]

The premiere of The Magic Flute was met with only modest enthusiasm, but within a few days during its run it had become an extraordinary success, and has charmed audiences ever since.  Despite a few narrative inconsistencies in Schikaneder’s libretto, Mozart’s score sparkles with the magic and genius of a master at play.  The music is appreciable on many levels, from giddy, simple tunes, to wonderfully sophisticated moments of complex counterpoint – the whole tied together with many exquisite melodies.  The Overture is a wonderful example of such.  Beginning with three ominous chords that represent the sanctity of Sarastro’s realm (and, apparently, the number three carries a significant mystical meaning for Masons), the music then dashes off in a free-spirited fugue,
[. . .]

The Magic Flute was the highlight of Schikaneder’s career, and was the “hit” that Mozart needed so badly, only, he hardly reaped the rewards from it.
[. . .]