The Magic Flute
By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Opéra de Montréal
Conductor, Alain Trudel
Director, Kelly Robinson
A review by M. D. Ball of the performance on November 14, 2009
This review assumes familiarity with the story.
(Cliquer pour lire la critique en français.)
For those who enjoy interpreting operas, Mozart's The Magic Flute is probably the one that is pregnant with the most possibilities. What keeps this opera fresh is ambiguity. And that ambiguity has given rise to a panoply of debates and interpretations in the 220 years since Flute's premiere.
As a fairy tale, Flute is undeniably charming; like a fable typical of, say, the Brothers Grimm, it has morality lessons for us all. Perhaps the most compelling such lesson is that of questioning circumstantial evidence, of recognizing the difference between reality and apparent reality. The Queen of the Night, of course, first introduces herself as a paragon of virtue and her nemesis, Sarastro, as the embodiment of evil. This is the most consequential deception in the story. But beyond the simple literary office of moralizing, Flute calls attention to itself as an adventure story, a romance, a tale of existential struggle, and a commentary on society, culture, and politics. It deals with the search for wisdom, the fear of death, and the control over one's own destiny, all the while trading in the currency of unresolved ambiguity. Mozart repeatedly tosses to his captive audience the antipodes of various dualities: good and evil, restraint and hedonism, reason and emotion, paternalism and autonomy.
(Although I don't remember where I first heard this comparison, there's even an interpretation of this opera that juxtaposes it against George Lucas' Star Wars. It seems there's a direct correspondence between the main characters in terms of personality and function: Tamino is Luke Skywalker, Pamino is Princess Leia, Sarastro is Obi Wan Kenobi, the Queen of the Night is Darth Vader, and Papageno is Threepio. Even the flute itself has a counterpart in the light saber.)
Be that as it may, Flute is easily seen as an allegory, whether intentional or accidental, of the principles that drove the French Revolution. In fact, this opera's premiere in 1791 followed the fall of the Bastille by only two years. As scholars have argued, Flute can be seen as advocating Enlightened Absolutism, with its emphasis on rationality and its advocacy of religious tolerance, freedom of speech, freedom of religious belief, and other rights that we now take for granted. The view of Flute as evangelism for Freemasonry has been the subject of so many volumes that I won't address it here, except to say that Freemasonry's values, at least as presented in this opera, were more-or-less consistent with those of the Enlightenment. Mozart raises up those values to cast doubt on old irrational attitudes, not the least of which are prejudices that so many people uncritically and mindlessly perpetuate.
If it even exists, the line demarcating deception, ambiguity, and hypocrisy is very thin. One reason I say this is that the apparent misogyny in Flute, of which there are many examples, metamorphoses into an implied equality of the sexes in the context of a marriage partnership, a partnership exemplified by Tamino and Pamina at the end of the story, and the apotheosis of which binds Isis and Osiris. Nevertheless, ambiguity still stares us directly in the face. At one point, Sarastro admonishes Pamina that
Ein Mann muß eure Herzen leiten,
Denn ohne ihn pflegt jedes Weib
Aus ihrem Wirkungskreis zu schreiten. (1.18)
"A man must direct your hearts,
For without him every woman will
Stray outside her circle."
These are hardly the words of an enlightened ruler who touts reason and universal equality. Is Sarastro a hypocrite? Is Mozart advocating sexism through Sarastro, or is he pointing out the fact that even a man who is otherwise rational -- enlightened -- is vulnerable to prejudice? If that's not enough ambiguity, there's even more swirling around the question of racism, for which Flute is notorious.
Consider, for example, these uncomfortable words from Monostatos:
Und ich soll die Liebe meiden
Weil ein Schwarzer häßlich ist
"And I must avoid love
Because a black is ugly"
Consider also these words, no less uncomfortable:
Weiss ist schön! Ich muß sie küssen;
Mond, verstecke dich dazu!
Sollt' es dich zu sehr verdrießen,
O so mach' die Augen zu!
"White is beautiful! I must kiss her;
Moon, hide yourself for this!
Should it vex you too much,
Oh, then close your eyes!"
Is this Mozart's view of the relationship between the races? Did he really believe these assertions about color, ugliness, and beauty? Or is he using Monostatos to expose this attitude to scrutiny and, consequently, to reconsideration and rejection?
Papageno's initial discomfort with Monostatos as a black man reinforces his expectation that Sarastro is evil. Nevertheless, Papageno quickly realizes that the variety of colors among human beings is just as natural as it is among birds. This indifference into which Papageno settles toward Monostatos' pigmentation doesn't accord with a racist agenda. Even more interesting is Monostatos' asking Pamina whether her reason for resisting his sexual advances, which are better described as attempted rape, is that he's black. Her reply aside, this particular moment is quite telling in that Mozart gives us a black character who feels indignation at the possibility that a white woman would reject him on the basis of race. Monostatos, therefore, would seem to have at least a two-fold audacity in the social context of the time: (a) expecting a white woman to desire him and (b) asking Mozart's white European audience of 1791 to notice the unfairness of racial discrimination. Again, this doesn't accord with a racist agenda on the part of the composer or the librettist.
But the single most compelling puzzle in this context is the fact that Monostatos' original question -- whether Pamina rejects him because of color -- is never unequivocally answered. In my opinion, neither an abiding racist nor an abiding anti-racist would have permitted such a critical omission. Why, then, the ambiguity? Is Mozart trying to tell his brother Masons and the rest of us that our reality (i.e., our behavior) still lags behind our apparent reality (i.e. our claims of high ideals)? Is he trying to distinguish where we are socially and culturally from where we ought to be?
Although it has become customary to drop some of the lines from this opera that imply misogyny or racism, this practice may ironically be an injustice to the higher purpose. How effective would Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird have been at exposing the cruelty of bigotry if the author had omitted the offensive realism? Or Archie Bunker's epithets in All in the Family at showing the embarrassing stupidity of it all? Or the racist intimations in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun at revealing the insidiousness?
If we approach Flute as the allegory I mentioned above, then Sarastro represents the reasonable sovereign, the benevolent ruler whose sagacity and patience ensure peace and prosperity for his subjects, while catalyzing a general expansion of knowledge and a growth in the influence of rationality. In Opéra de Montréal's production, unfortunately, there was little along this line in Reinhard Hagen's performance as Sarastro, apart from his booming basso. He sang his role mechanically and perfunctorily, without even the passion that a self-appointed advocate of reason should bring to bear on his words and actions. After all, equanimity doesn't require being prosaic.
In this same allegory, the Queen of the Night represents the Ancien Régime and functions as an obscurantist. Accordingly, early on in the performance, Aline Kutan convinced me of her character's cunning and conceit. She sang the role with flair, and excited her listeners while soaring through "Der Hölle Rache" and tapping those high F's with satisfying accuracy, though admittedly I'd have preferred somewhat more delicacy in the attack. As impressive as her coloratura acrobatics were, though, her confidence during this aria felt tentative.
As Tamino, John Tessier's tenor was mismatched to the auditorium. His fine singing voice was too weak for the space, especially in the low range, and much of his voice was lost to the ether. Aaron St. Clair Nicholson, as the playful and hedonistic Papageno, was one of the few bright spots in this otherwise pedestrian production. He was the impetuous, irritating, and sympathetic Papageno that should strike a noticeable contrast with Tamino to establish the interdependency in their metaphor: Tamino and Papageno are two sides of the same person (Mozart himself, perhaps?), the former being the man and the latter the boy. Their struggle with each other is that of their opposing traits: sophistication and naivete, moderation and hedonism, circumspection and carelessness. Despite Nicholson's sparkling and sometimes winsome performance, this relationship between Tamino and Papageno failed to leap out, largely because of Tessier's lack of vocal power.
This production's single greatest redemption burst forth in the beautiful performance of Karina Gauvin, who sang the role of Pamina. The richness of Gauvin's voice was ideal for the only role in this opera that sings from the shadows of joy that only the gods know to be imminent. Hers is the role that skirts tragedy and expresses a humanity that we don't see in nearly anyone else in this adventure, particularly the Queen.
Despite a few notable strengths, Opéra de Montréal's effort was, on the whole, tepid. It didn't scintillate; it didn't seduce; it didn't impress. In a sense, it did a mild indignity to uncommonly elegant music and to a story that endears in some ways and provokes in others. If through The Magic Flute Mozart is inviting us to confront the ambiguities of life, distilled down to the simple truth that there is no happiness without sadness, and no sweetness without bitterness, then the sublimity of his music forces us to go beyond mere resignation and to embrace ambiguity for the reality it is, changing what we can and accepting what we can't.