# Is The Magic Flute silly?



## Vlad (Feb 23, 2012)

I'm new to opera and would appreciate your candid responses. I found the Italian Girl in Algiers interesting but silly, and much preferred La traviata, which was awesome. Is it ikely that the Magic Flute would be too fanciful for me?


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

*A reasonably transparent window on my thoughts in this regard...*

*can be found here*.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

It is comedy - without the laugh track. It is comedy - about human nature; so some of the humor has to be wry.

It is farcical - but not silly.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Well, I consider the Magic Flute to be no comedy, nor about human nature, but a masonic bric brac of mere suggestion, a Potemkin village of religious superficialities. Yes, silliness indeed, but silliness touched by the genius of Mozart.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Vlad said:


> I'm new to opera and would appreciate your candid responses. I found the Italian Girl in Algiers interesting but silly, and much preferred La traviata, which was awesome. Is it ikely that the Magic Flute would be too fanciful for me?


Hello Vlad & welcome to the forum from another opera fan. I have to confess I find Flute a bit silly but no sillier than lots of other operas which I love.

How can you not love 'everyman' Papageno who gets his girl in the end?


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

A man with a duck on his head? what's silly about that?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> Well, I consider the Magic Flute to be no comedy, nor about human nature, but a masonic bric brac of mere suggestion, a Potemkin village of religious superficialities. Yes, silliness indeed, but silliness touched by the genius of Mozart.


You seem not to understand that it is anti the masonic movement.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> It is comedy - without the laugh track. It is comedy - about human nature; so some of the humor has to be wry.
> 
> It is farcical - but not silly.


 which opera are you referring to, there seem to be a mix-up. the heading said" is the Magic Flute silly"

, but Vlad said he found The Italian Girl silly.
I think the Rossini is wonderful and hysterically funny---with the right artists


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

moody said:


> You seem not to understand that it is anti the masonic movement.


Explain...


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

I seem to have had a temporary (I hope) mental collapse . In fact the opposite is true , Mozart was fascinated by Schikaneder's fairy tale ,which offered him a mass of charming contrasts, the mixture of cordiality and humour and paramount a noble idea expressed in the masonic symbolism to which he was attracted. He actually belonged to the same lodge as Schikanader..
Put it down to old age or the fact that I don't think I've read up on Zauberfloete for about forty years although I,ve seen it at Glyndebourne and listened to it often.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

The Magic Flute is very silly. But that's what makes it such a great opera!


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

moody said:


> I seem to have had a temporary (I hope) mental collapse . In fact the opposite is true , Mozart was fascinated by Schikaneder's fairy tale ,which offered him a mass of charming contrasts, the mixture of cordiality and humour and paramount a noble idea expressed in the masonic symbolism to which he was attracted. He actually belonged to the same lodge as Schikanader..
> Put it down to old age or the fact that I don't think I've read up on Zauberfloete for about forty years although I,ve seen it at Glyndebourne and listened to it often.


Well that's comforting - there I was thinking I'd got it all wrong for years and so had all the opera directors of the productions i'd seen:tiphat:.

To be honest I don't think it is that silly, it doesn't pretend to be anything more than a fairy tale with a message.

If you want silly try Ernani.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

No... if you want silly, you need look no further than Richard Strauss' _Die ägyptische Helena_. Let's get real... an opera that was intended to be serious featuring an all-seeing/all-knowing sea-mollusk; a series of mishaps involving various potions; a hallucinatory Menelaus, fresh from victory in the Trojan War, running about chasing after his imaginary enemy, Paris and in the process killing to son of the king of the island of which they are shipwrecked; Altair, the king of the island who takes the news of his son's murder in stride and carries on in paying court and praising Helena, the wife of the man who killed him; and the goddess Aithra, whose arrival (somehow?) sets everything right and they all go skipping off happily ever after (except poor dead Da-Ud, the son of the King).

I love Strauss... and there is some exquisite music here... but just don't attempt to follow the libretto.


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

I was just going to add that "Flute" is quite sensible compared to some Opera's. Non the less, it shouldn't stop one from enjoying it.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I love it. A bit of fantasy, a bit of ritual, some knockabout comedy and bit of a sanctimonious 'message' at the end where virtue triumphs over adversity. Even the Queen of the Night isn't really evil in the strictest operatic sense. Probably the most multi-faceted Mozart opera I've heard, even if it isn't my favourite (that's DG). Maybe it is a little silly but it makes a change from some 18th century/early 19th century operas where there are ridiculous disguises, assignations, misinterpreted messages, love tokens and people hiding not very convincingly.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

elgars ghost said:


> I love it. A bit of fantasy, a bit of ritual, some knockabout comedy and bit of a sanctimonious 'message' at the end where virtue triumphs over adversity. Even the Queen of the Night isn't really evil in the strictest operatic sense. Probably the most multi-faceted Mozart opera I've heard, even if it isn't my favourite (that's DG). Maybe it is a little silly but it makes a change from some 18th century/early 19th century operas where there are ridiculous disguises, assignations, misinterpreted messages, love tokens and people hiding not very convincingly.


Every time the male choir of which I'm a member sings its parts of _Die Zauberflöte_ I've got such a lousy 'waste-of-words' feeling in my mouth. Every one knows in advance that the Queen is not that bad and that kills off all drama from the start. Ít's a lacklustre gulash, that is being served & again served & served again - from one scene to the next one - on the opera attender's plate & palate. Now Don Giovanni, that brings back fire & spirit! Just taste the malignancy in the voice of Thomas Hampson (my favourite DG), the radicalness + the miraculous fact that this villain remains a nobleman throughout. And: a human being. In the Magic Flute I miss human beings. All of the characters are fairy tale cardboard figures. Waste of time IMO.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

^
^

Have you sung in DG as well? I did like your 'Potemkin village of religious superficialities' soundbite in your previous post!


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## Moira (Apr 1, 2012)

The Magic Flute is undoubtedly my favourite opera. 

The storyline is a little difficult to grasp at the first viewing, but the music is so sublimely beautiful and such fun that it is easy to persevere through it. Now it seem romantic rather than silly.


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## tgtr0660 (Jan 29, 2010)

I think it would be more silly to go to a performance of Die Zauberflote and act totally serious without at least a smile every now and then for the entire night...


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## Bardamu (Dec 12, 2011)

It's silly awesome.
For the little I know about Mozart Operas, it is my favorite.

The Magic Flute probably is more akin to L'italiana in Algeri than La traviata.
But don't be discouraged it's worth your time.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

This is one of my favorite operas for the sheer beauty of the music. As for the plot, I'm not sure I'd call it silly (or, as others have pointed out, no sillier than the plots of many other operas, at any rate). That said, the libretto does contain some phrases/ideas that are downright offensive in contemporary society. Not only is there the Queen of the Night, an uppity woman who doesn't know her place. There is also the character of the Moor, Monostatos, who says (sings) such delightful things as "white is beautiful," "a black (man) is ugly," and "I'll take a white woman," before he tries to rape Pamina. Earlier in the opera, there are other little gems like "A woman does little, but chatters a lot," and (referring to the Queen), "She is a woman and thinks like a woman." This observation was not intended to be complimentary. When our local opera company staged _Die Zauberflöte _last summer, the person(s) responsible for the surtitles did not translate any of this directly from the German, but came up with something that was just approximate and avoided the offensive parts altogether.

But, as I said, this is still one of my favorite operas. I listen to the music and ignore some of the outdated sentiments in the libretto.


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## sah (Feb 28, 2012)

Raping a girl is good.
Hey, dear daughter, kill that Sarastro with this knife.

Not very politically correct indeed. So not really silly, a least in these times.


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> Every time the male choir of which I'm a member sings its parts of _Die Zauberflöte_ I've got such a lousy 'waste-of-words' feeling in my mouth. Every one knows in advance that the Queen is not that bad and that kills off all drama from the start. Ít's a lacklustre gulash, that is being served & again served & served again - from one scene to the next one - on the opera attender's plate & palate. Now Don Giovanni, that brings back fire & spirit! Just taste the malignancy in the voice of Thomas Hampson (my favourite DG), the radicalness + the miraculous fact that this villain remains a nobleman throughout. And: a human being. In the Magic Flute I miss human beings. All of the characters are fairy tale cardboard figures. Waste of time IMO.


I can't believe my ears. The Magic flute has some of the best choral music Mozart ever wrote. How dare you say that.

Everyone knows that that Queen of the Night is not that bad? Did you mean to say that the Queen of Night is portrayed as benevolent and kind until the second act? Because that is not the same thing. At the end of the opera, EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT IS VERY VERY BAD. The characters are cardboard figures? Please explain how this is consistent with Sarastro's benelovance and wisdom coupled with his sexist attitude along with his apparent temper problem as seen in the end of the first act. Tamino and Papageno too are both unlike any characters in virtually any fairy tails I've seen or read. How can you even think of calling them 'fairy tale cardboard figures'?


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## obwan (Oct 24, 2011)

Getting back to the original question.... Yes the magic flute is quite silly... if you go in expecting to see a tragedy or a comedy, or even a fairytale or a tragicomedy. The best way to describe it is just plain 'fun'. Although I might point out that I've never seen a full blown production. I've only seen the Bergman movie version, which had drastically watered down dialogue. like sometimes only 30 second to a minute between songs. I think it works quite well that way, where the sillieness is practically never allowed to distract from the music, although this version did have some continuity errors oweing probably to the abridgement. 

It has some of the greatest operatic music Mozart wrote, coupled with folksy-art songs, wonderfully orchestrated counterpoint, catchy ensembles and duets, and even the 'masonic message' doesn't distract from the music itself, for instance in Papageno & Pamina's duett of brotherly love. Musically, who could want anything more?


Edit: Oh I just thought of something. Every time I read a review of the magic flute that comments on yada yada yada (usually the masonic thing) it makes me curious, am I missing something? Should I actually watch an unabridged version?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

As I've tried to say once already Vlad actually said that The Italian Girl In Algiers was silly ,he then asked if the Magic Flute would be too fanciful for him.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Waste of time IMO.

Luckily your opinion doesn't matter one iota.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Silly... and yet laden with some of the most profoundly beautiful music Mozart ever wrote... and some of the most moving:






This scene... and much of the _Magic Flute_ as a whole... reminds me of Picasso's famous quote: "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." Mozart is able to convey the greatest profundity through the simplest... most seemingly child-like of means. What greater expression of the overwhelming experience of love can there be than Papageno... the most loquacious chatterer... rendered dumb by love... so that all he can blurt out is "Pa pa pa pa pa..."?

I've always loved the manner in which these two performers convey the flirtatious relationship between Papageno and Papagena.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Waste of time IMO.
> 
> Luckily your opinion doesn't matter one iota.


I found a better summary for the Magic Flute than 'silly': UNCTUOUS.
Luckily my opinion doesn't matter one tittle.


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## zdic (Feb 12, 2012)

Here is nice and funny version of Papageno


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