After reading the libretto of The Magic Flute, I was able to better imagine Mozart's characteristics and techniques that we discussed in class. The lyrics were quite light and humorous in my opinion, especially because of the character of Papageno, the feather-covered bird catcher. He added a lot of jest to the libretto with his foolish comments and senseless actions. Even the opening of the opera was silly when Tamino is being chased by a huge snake. I feel as if The Magic Flute was a perfect play for Mozart to write the music for; at some points while reading I could almost hear his obnoxious cackle.
Although I was not listening to the opera, I was able to still pick out some of the instrumental symbolism that Mozart employed in his works. The frequent "trumpet blasts" indeed indicated some sort of royalty, many times the coming of Sarastro. Obviously the sounds of the flute and the glockenspiel were quite important to the opera, but I was not positive as to what, if anything, they symbolized. In this case, they seemed to represent salvation or some other type of help. Any other ideas?
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I definitely agree with everything you said, especially about the forwardness of Moazarts characteristics throughout this piece. I also strongly believe that the play can be characterized differently if you look at different characters. It can certainly be seen as a comic folk opera while looking at Papageno and Papagena, or even a baroque feel to it when you look at it through the character of The Queen of The Night.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure about the symbolism regarding the flute, except for that fact that it brought magic. One symbol I caught on to right away in the beginning of the play was the snake. This may be stretching it, but I feel like was directly connected to the serpent in the biblical story Adam and Eve.
This play was certainly filled with a lot of Mozart's witty characteristics, and comical personality traits. I feel like this was a great play to read to really comprehend and understand more of Mozart.
The magic flute was a crazed out result of Mozart's autism. I'm not saying it was bad, matter of fact, when discussing it in class, I liked it more and more, but when people say that it is witty, I do not believe you can completely abandon the idea that he was intelligent but also had autism.
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