Ep. 121 Mozart's Die Zauberflöte

Summary

Opera for Everyone: Episode 121 Summary - Mozart's Die Zauberflöte

Host: Pat Wright
Guest: Conductor Ben Manus
Release Date: August 11, 2024
Airing: Sundays, 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. on 89.1 KHOL, Jackson, Wyoming
Artwork: Rosie Brooks (www.rosiebrooks.com)

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Introduction

In Episode 121 of Opera for Everyone, host Pat Wright welcomes conductor Ben Manus to delve into Mozart's beloved singspiel, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). The episode aims to make opera more accessible and enjoyable by unpacking the opera's intricate narrative, musical genius, and underlying philosophical themes.

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Overview of Die Zauberflöte

Pat Wright introduces Die Zauberflöte as Mozart's final fully completed opera, characterized by its blend of serious operatic elements with fairy tale-like storytelling. The opera is recognized for its dual appeal to both children and adults, integrating philosophical depth with enchanting narratives.

Pat Wright [00:49]:
"...what might be a lot of people's favorite opera, or singspiel, if you want to be correct."

Ben Manus [01:19]:
"...it works on many levels. It works on a very philosophical, metaphysical level. It also works as sort of a children's tale of magic instruments and birds and things."

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Magical Elements and Masonic Symbolism

Ben Manus elaborates on the significant presence of the number three and its Masonic connotations within the opera. As a known Freemason, Mozart infused Die Zauberflöte with symbols and motifs aligned with Masonic traditions, such as the trio of characters and the recurrent use of the number three in musical structures.

Ben Manus [02:32]:
"...the number three was an important number in the Masonic tradition. Of course, it appears all over the place in this piece..."

Pat Wright acknowledges that while Masonic symbolism is prominent, the opera's fairy tale elements ensure its broad appeal, allowing it to transcend specific allegorical interpretations.

Pat Wright [03:26]:
"...the fairy tale nature of what's going on...there's a dream logic..."

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Character Introductions and Analysis

The discussion transitions into character analysis, starting with Prince Tamino and his companion Papageno.

• Tamino: The archetypal hero embarking on a quest, symbolizing enlightenment and virtue.

  Pat Wright [06:24]:
  "He went to almost every performance in Vienna that he could go to."

• Papageno: A relatable, everyman character serving as comic relief, representing human desires and fears.

  Ben Manus [17:32]:
  "I think that's exactly right. Perfect."

• Queen of the Night: Initially portrayed as a victim, her character reveals a darker, vengeful side, embodying the theme of deceptive appearances.

  Pat Wright [22:09]:
  "The original Queen of the Night... she knocked it out of her."

• Sarastro: The wise and virtuous high priest, whose true nature contrasts with the Queen of the Night, highlighting themes of enlightenment over darkness.

  Ben Manus [71:08]:
  "He is Einmensch, a human being. And that's the important piece of who he is."

• Pamina: The damsel in distress whose journey reflects growth and resilience, moving from vulnerability to empowerment.

• Monostatos: The antagonist whose actions and motivations provide depth to his character, illustrating the complexity of good and evil.

  Ben Manus [90:42]:
  "...he sort of becomes slightly more humanized."

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Musical Insights

The episode delves into Mozart's masterful composition techniques:

• Overture: The initial three notes symbolize foundational Masonic principles and set the thematic tone.

  Pat Wright [02:26]:
  "The number three plays quite an important role in this show."

• Arias and Duets: Iconic pieces like the Queen of the Night's arias showcase Mozart's ability to blend vocal prowess with emotional depth.

  Ben Manus [21:17]:
  "There are so few singers in the world who can really sing this..."

• Use of Instruments: The magic flute and glockenspiel serve both narrative and symbolic functions, representing harmony and the triumph of good over evil.

  Ben Manus [16:09]:
  "But depending on the production... he's just basically lip fluting on stage."

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Plot Progression and Themes

Ben Manus and Pat Wright walk through the opera's narrative, highlighting key plot developments and underlying themes:

1. Quest Initiation: Tamino is tasked by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter, Pamina, introducing the central quest.

   Pat Wright [05:54]:
   "It was his last opera and it's... more accessible."

2. Trials and Moral Lessons: The characters undergo various trials symbolizing virtues like silence, courage, and enlightenment, reinforcing the opera's didactic elements.

   Pat Wright [26:16]:
   "Enlightenment work... Mozart is a man of the enlightenment."

3. Transformation and Resolution: The journey culminates in personal growth, the restoration of balance, and the triumph of enlightenment ideals over deceit and vengeance.

   Ben Manus [85:05]:
   "They lay out the future trials for Tamino."

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Ben Manus's Perspective

Conductor Ben Manus shares his personal journey into conducting, emphasizing the challenges and rewards of bringing operatic works to life. His experiences provide a unique insider's view into the complexities of interpreting Mozart's score and the collaborative nature of opera production.

Ben Manus [45:29]:
"...asked all my friends to come play this Mozart symphony for an hour on Thursday night..."

He also discusses the importance of balancing scholarly research with personal interpretation to honor Mozart's intentions while infusing fresh perspective into every performance.

Ben Manus [47:46]:
"...you try to be true to how you feel it needs to."

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Concluding Thoughts

The episode wraps up with reflections on the enduring appeal of Die Zauberflöte and its capacity to convey profound philosophical ideas through an engaging and accessible narrative. Pat Wright encourages listeners to experience the opera firsthand to fully appreciate its musical and thematic richness.

Pat Wright [119:49]:
"Opera can be challenging, but everyone loves a good story."

Ben Manus [120:24]:
"...thank you, Mozart."

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Notable Quotes

• Pat Wright [07:53]:
  "Opera for everyone."

• Ben Manus [26:17]:
  "Love it. Enlightenment."

• Pat Wright [82:51]:
  "...Sarastro in his big voice says, well, he's not just a prince, he is Einmensch, a human being."

• Ben Manus [106:23]:
  "These participants need to honor their vows, but they just can't keep up with the demands."

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Conclusion

Episode 121 of Opera for Everyone offers a comprehensive exploration of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, blending plot analysis, musical dissection, and philosophical commentary. Through the insightful dialogue between Pat Wright and Ben Manus, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the opera's timeless relevance and its harmonious blend of entertainment and enlightenment.

For more engaging opera discussions, subscribe to the Opera for Everyone podcast and join the mission to make opera accessible to all.

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Links & Credits:

• Illustrator: Rosie Brooks (www.rosiebrooks.com)
• Recording Featured: Academy of St Martin in the Fields Orchestra conducted by Sir Neville Mariner (1989)

Transcript

[Pat Wright]

Welcome to another edition of Opera for Everyone. I'm your host, Pat Wright, and I have a very special guest with me today, conductor Ben Manus. Ben, welcome.

[Ben Manus]

Thanks, Pat. It's great to be here with you.

[Pat Wright]

I'm thrilled beyond words, honestly. It is such a treat to have you here to discuss, I think, what might be a lot of people's favorite opera, or singspiel, if you want to be correct.

[Ben Manus]

Right. Certainly a lot of people's favorite opera. Also a lot of people's first opera.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, yes. Well, we should say this is the Magic Flute, Die Sauber Floete.

[Ben Manus]

Good.

[Pat Wright]

I practiced a little bit. It is a lot of people's first opera. In fact, I even had a story, tape or an audiobook that had a child going through the world of the Magic Flute. Her mother was singing the part of the Queen of the Night. And it just was the whole fantasy, fairy tale world.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah.

[Pat Wright]

So in a way, it was my kid's first opera.

[Ben Manus]

Well, it is sort of. I mean, like most great works of art, it works on many levels. It works on a very philosophical, metaphysical level. It also works as sort of a children's tale of, you know, magic instruments and birds and things. And so I think that's why, you know, the Met does their holiday version every year, for instance, in English for kids.

[Pat Wright]

Right. It's one of the handful, I think, of operas that serious opera houses will sometimes, not always, but sometimes present in translation, particularly when they're trying to pull in a family audience.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. It's. It. The Magic Flute is. I mean, the music, it is so stuck in my head right now. And I could pull up any number of songs, and I'm so excited that you're here to speak about them. We just heard a tiny bit of the overture starting up with those three notes. And the number three plays quite an important role in this show. And that's a little bit of the philosophy, I think. And it certainly shows up in groups of three characters, but it also shows up in the music, like in the overture.

[Ben Manus]

Well, this is part of the whole discussion around the piece. I mean, we know that Mozart was a Freemason.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

We know that there is imagery within the piece related to that. And that three was an important number in the Masonic tradition. Of course, it appears all over the place in this piece, but it appears all over the place in lots of music that had nothing to do with masonry. So it's just a classic discussion about the piece. And there are, of course, musicologists who think the whole thing is just an expression of his Masonic ideals. And other musicologists who come in and say, well, let's take it easy here. That's a lot. Well, maybe with your history background, maybe you can tell us more about that. I'm sure you know more about it than I do, but there's no question. Yes. I mean, it's the most obvious thing about the very beginning of the piece is these three sort of pillars of chords, like the pillars that stand at the entrance of Zoroastria's temple and which of course, reappear later in the piece. Yeah. The imagery is just all over the place.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. I mean, you can over focus on the Masonic, I believe. And one of the things I'd like to say up front and it. It resonates with what you said about it being an opera that can appeal to children as well, is the. The dream quality or the fairy tale nature of what's going on. Because a lot of the details, if you really think about them, there's a dream logic. There's not real world cause and effect necessarily, with all of the action that goes on which leads people to think that this is an inscrutable opera. And it might be in some of the details, but it's also a fairy tale. Just in the richest, most interesting sense. I think it is.

[Ben Manus]

But it's sort of unique in that way. I mean, so much of, you know, what would come later, especially in Italian opera and the Verismo tradition is based on real life. You know, you talk about Puccini and Verdi and there's almost no metaphysical, supernatural element of those operas. There is, of course, in virtually every Wagner opera, but it's of a very different sort than we have in the Magic Flute in Wagner. It's myths and legends and gods and.

[Pat Wright]

It'S not as playful as this.

[Ben Manus]

It's not as playful, though. It is a supernatural world. There's no sense in which. It's a children's fairy tale world, which. The Magic Flute.

[Pat Wright]

Don't take your kids to the ring.

[Ben Manus]

Well, yeah, unless you want them to.

[Pat Wright]

Have a good nap or nightmares for months to come. Yeah, it is interesting. Well, this is the last fully completed opera by Mozart. And he was. From all I'm able to gather, he was very excited to do this. He'd done those wonderful operas, you know, Don Giovanni, Cosi Fantutti. He had done these wonderful operas with Da Ponte, all in the elevated Italian style. And he was eager to get to some of his Germanic roots here. And his good friend Emanuel Schickenader owned this theater just on the outskirts in the suburbs of Vienna. And they had been friends for quite some time. They had met, I think, in Leipzig. And Schickenader, very talented man of the theater who played the original Papageno, of course, and he is credited with the libretto. There's some discussion around that and we'll probably leave that be.

[Ben Manus]

Of where he may have stolen it from, you mean?

[Pat Wright]

Well, there's always inspiration behind libretto's inspiration. Stealing, who knows?

[Ben Manus]

It's a fine line.

[Pat Wright]

Sometimes it is. There were other people in his company who, after his demise and Mozart's, took credit for the. I mean, there's plenty of controversy if you want to spend time with it. But the credited librettist is Emmanuel Schickinator, this man who owned the theater where it was first produced. And it was a smashing success.

[Ben Manus]

It was. It was a huge amount. It only premiered, what was it, several months before Mozart died. It was the year of his death. He died in, I think, December of 1791. And the piece was premiered earlier that year. He went to almost every performance in Vienna that he could go to. But you're right, it was his last opera and it's, of course, you mentioned Zingspiel earlier and it's such a different style than those sort of elevated Italian operas, the Diponte trilogy. In this Magic Flute, we have musical numbers separated by dialogue, spoken dialogue, and of course it was in German in the vernacular. And so really it was more sort of like a Broadway musical of 1791 rather than, you know, oh, my God, elevated opera. And I think it really also speaks just to his personality. You know, we think of Mozart as this enlightened hot genius. Oh, my God. But that's really not who he was. He was, in many ways he had that aspect of his personality, but he also loved poop jokes.

[Pat Wright]

He did.

[Ben Manus]

So it's all in there with him. And so I think in some ways this kind of entertainment for everybody, that kind of singspiel.

[Pat Wright]

Opera for everyone.

[Ben Manus]

Opera for everyone. Look at you. Yeah, it really brings out things sort of the more human side of his personality.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think maybe we should turn to the story now and we can muse about some other topics as we go on. But it opens again in this incredibly fairy tale way where you have a prince and a dragon, but you don't have the prince shooting arrows at the dragon or fighting him with his sword. He's running away in fear, shouting, help me, help me or else I'm going to be lost.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, the opera really just Begins right off the bat. Boom, you're there in the action. And as we're about to play the opening number, which is the music that comes directly after the overture, something that is important to listen to, to understand how Mozart creates the kind of atmosphere, the kind of character that he wants you to feel right off the bat. I want you to listen for these little notes at the very beginning. You'll hear in the second violins and the violas, this sort of engine underneath the music that gives it this driving quality of the prince running away from the serpent. And then the way he sings, it's. He's out of breath almost. He's running, he's out of breath, he's crying, he's trying to shout for help, but he doesn't have any breath left. So all of these are such important aspects of the way great opera composers create not only the plot of what's happening, but the plot happening in the music. Grand is Twilight.

[Pat Wright]

Well, we've just met some of our characters musically. Not only Tamino, the prince, who by the way, faints dead of exhaustion. Fear. Also, this trio of women show up.

[Ben Manus]

So at the very end of the excerpt that you just heard, you heard the entrance of the three ladies, one of the two sets of three characters. The other is the three boys. And we don't know this yet, but they are representatives of the Queen of the Night who we are going to meet, who we start off thinking is a good guy and wind up realizing she is not. But they have come and basically they saved Tamino, they kill the serpent and then they sort of have a little comedic bit afterwards.

[Pat Wright]

Well, they find him to be awfully handsome.

[Ben Manus]

They do.

[Pat Wright]

Awfully attractive. And how about if I stay here, girls, and you go tell the queen?

[Ben Manus]

Right? And they have a very sort of little funny trio where each one of the three of them is trying to get the other two to leave so they can be alone with him. And then they realize, ugh, they're not going. And then they all leave.

[Pat Wright]

Yes. And there he is, still unconscious. And we have another character who will.

[Ben Manus]

Join us, the famous Papageno, who as you previously referenced, was played in the original production by Schickenider, the librettist. Papageno is sort of a, again, sort of a folklore creature. You know, he's sort of a half bird man. Bird. He's a bird catcher, but he's also kind of a bird and it's very unclear.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. And. And may I add, oftentimes depicted as being feather brained, that he's just he's not of the elevated status. Not that we've seen the prince being elevated, but he is a prince and they're going to sort that out pretty quickly between the two of them once Tamina wakes up. But I love that Papagena has one of. Just like in any musical, this is who I Am song. I'm the bird catcher.

[Ben Manus]

Yep, he does. He's in fact, he's got two. One in Act 1 and one in Act 2, where we find out who he is and what he wants, which is a wife. And we'll get back to that later, I'm sure. But plot wise, what's happening here is the three ladies have already left by the time Tamino wakes up from his unconscious stupor and he sees Papageno, who has come on and is about to sing his Here I Am song. And Tamino assumes that it was Papageno who saved him from. From the serpent.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, he does. And Papageno kicks the serpent to make sure he's dead.

[Ben Manus]

Exactly.

[Pat Wright]

And then takes credit.

[Ben Manus]

There you go.

[Pat Wright]

And he gets in a little bit of trouble for that. But let's hear his introduction. A little bit of his introduction.

[Ben Manus]

I met your majesty.

[Pat Wright]

Bolt Advice Furnace. Well, now we've met Papageno and he has a little bit of a musical signature there.

[Ben Manus]

Yes. So you heard these pipes or flutes or depending on the production, he's supposed to be playing sort of a pan flute, which is his bird call. That's how he catches his birds.

[Pat Wright]

And what's a pan flute?

[Ben Manus]

So it, boy, you've seen it. It's a row of wooden pipes, almost like organ pipes that you hold and you can sort of blow across it and move it side to side and.

[Pat Wright]

That'S how you makes a little scale, basically.

[Ben Manus]

But depending on the production, either he will have some kind of flute, the singer will. Or frankly more often it is just played by the flute player or piccolo player in the orchestra and he's just basically lip fluting on stage. But yes, that is his musical call and it comes back many times. It is also. I mean, Schickinader was not a great opera singer of the day. He was a man of the theater, but he was not a renowned opera singer. So his role, Papageno, is written for someone who is not really a top level opera singer necessarily.

[Pat Wright]

Oh, a more accessible role.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, it's very repetitive. Each of his two major arias has three verses which are exactly the same music, just different text and it's all within a very comfortable range for a baritone. So these Arias are frequently sung by students or young singers because they are not too technically challenging in terms of the vocally.

[Pat Wright]

All right. And I would also argue that that makes sense story wise because he's an ordinary guy. He is not this special prince. He is not this person with great, unusual or even supernatural powers. He's our everyman.

[Ben Manus]

Exactly.

[Pat Wright]

So I think that works.

[Ben Manus]

I think that's exactly right. Perfect.

[Pat Wright]

Okay, that's good, that's good. Well, there's Papageno and it's time for him to meet new best friend.

[Ben Manus]

That's right. They do meet. They go through this sort of song and dance that we referenced earlier about, oh, how he killed the dragon and let me make sure it's dead. And then the three ladies who actually did slay the dragon or serpent, they reappear. They were sent by their boss, the Queen of the Night, to rescue Tamino so that he can in turn rescue Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night.

[Pat Wright]

Right.

[Ben Manus]

And what they do when they come back is they give Tamino a picture of Pamino and say, here's who you need to rescue. Which leads us into his first aria, Tamino's first aria. This gorgeous song, love song, basically, where he has to a portrait of a woman he has never met and in fact just got her portrait five seconds ago.

[Pat Wright]

That's all it took. He is in love.

[Ben Manus]

He is smitten, man.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, I think one of the things that you said, this story works on many levels. It's many kinds of stories and I agree completely. And I think in part it's a coming of age story. And so this is him growing up. And we'll also see some growing up going on with the woman in the picture, Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night. But yes, the three ladies also come back to do one other thing. They have brought a little golden lock with them and they lock up the mouth of Papageno because he's been caught telling lies and they want to punish that. A lot of moralizing that goes on in this show.

[Ben Manus]

That's right. Which is ironic coming from the three ladies who are in fact sort of the evil henchmen of the opera.

[Pat Wright]

Yep.

[Ben Manus]

But they do do that, which will be important three numbers from now. But first, before we get there, we have another very important character to meet. After Tamino's gorgeous aria, we have the entrance amid much thunder and lightning.

[Pat Wright]

Oh yeah, you know, something big's about.

[Ben Manus]

To happen of the queen herself, who, I mean, this is one of the most recognizable characters in all of opera and especially her music is of course. And she initially portrays herself as this victim of oh my God, my daughter has been stolen from me. I had to see it happen in front of my eyes. And you, Tamino, you can go rescue her and she will be yours forever. I mean, it's a very, you know, fairy tale. It's a fairy tale. Yeah. Rescue Rapunzel from the castle and show the.

[Pat Wright]

Damn it. Save the damsel. You know, I am a woman in distress. The mother is a woman in distress, she says. And my daughter even more so because she was snatched from me and I was too weak to do anything to stop the evil. Sarastro. It's just, you know, she lays it on thick and this is one of those elements. If you are lucky enough to get to see multiple productions of the Magic Flute, it's so interesting to see how different directors will present her, particularly in the beginning. She can look very sympathetic, a bereft mother. She can just look dark and evil right from the beginning. But Tamino, the prince who has confidence and wants to be this knight errant, slaying dragons, rescuing damsels, he buys the whole thing hook, line and sinker.

[Ben Manus]

He sure does. And it's what really motivates the plot for the rest of at least the first act.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

Now musically speaking, the queen sings very little in this piece. She has two major arias, one in each act, the second of which is the very famous one that everybody has heard, even if they don't know what it is.

[Pat Wright]

You've heard it in commercials, if nothing.

[Ben Manus]

Else, all over the place. Yeah, movies. And she sings maybe just one other time in the opera, in the second act finale. It is such, in fact, such a specialized role. Everybody knows basically what she does is sing really high. And it is such a specialized role for a singer. There are so few singers in the world who can really sing this and many of them sort of make a career on just singing the Queen of the Night. And they will sing really only the Queen of the Night sometimes. I didn't know that until they get bored of it, basically. Oh, wow. Because again, it's so specialized, it's so difficult and there are so few people who can really, really nail it.

[Pat Wright]

Well, here's a little interesting tidbit of background. The original Queen of the Night, who sang it when it premiered in 1791 was the sister in law of Mozart, the.

[Ben Manus]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Pat Wright]

Eldest sister of his wife Costanza. In fact all. There were four sisters, four Weber sisters. That was her maiden name and they were all musical. The youngest one, not as much, wasn't as close to Mozart, but he worked with or married the other three. He worked with the. He was madly in love with the second sister before she rejected him. And then he marries the third sister, Costanza, but the first sister, the eldest sister, was the original Queen of the Night. And she knocked it out of her.

[Ben Manus]

Teaching me things.

[Pat Wright]

Vice versa.

[Ben Manus]

Well, should we listen to a little bit of her aria?

[Pat Wright]

Absolutely. You're listening to opera for everyone. And we have just met the Queen of the Night from Mozart's the Magic Flute. Hard to believe that such a sweet voice might have anything other than sweet intentions.

[Ben Manus]

Yes. In that particular aria that you just heard. Well, you just heard the second half of it where she has her vocal acrobatics and what she's really doing is sort of hyping up Tamino. Yes, you can do it. You, you, you can save her and then she'll be yours forever. It's the. The classic damsel in distress, as we discussed. But, oh, yes, there is venom behind her. And we're going to see it a lot later in the second act.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, it's interesting. I think one of the ideas to keep in mind when you're watching this, or honestly, possibly in life, is first impressions or what you think you know about a person or people might not be true. You might only have part of the.

[Ben Manus]

Story, you know, that's so true. And it's in fact exactly resembled in what Tamino says right after the Queen of the Nights aria when he says, was that real or are my senses deceiving me?

[Pat Wright]

Ooh.

[Ben Manus]

And it's very much, oh, was that just a veil? Was that mystical? Was that a real thing that I just saw? Well, I have this portrait in my hand that I just sang my aria about two numbers ago.

[Pat Wright]

Right.

[Ben Manus]

So that must be real.

[Pat Wright]

And I'm talking to this bird guy.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, I'm talking to this bird guy guy. But he's got a lock over his mouth that these three random ladies who saved me from a serpent put there.

[Pat Wright]

Right.

[Ben Manus]

So there's a whole lot of stuff going on. And so what happens next is Tamino and Papageno go off in search of Pamina to save her. But they come across, once again, our favorite three ladies. The first thing they do is they take off Papageno's lock on his mouth, which was put there as a punishment for lying.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, it was. And in fact, when they take it off, there's a lot of moralizing that goes on in this Show. It almost feels like they're sort of stepping aside to say, you people in the audience, listen, we have something we want you to think about. And they will say, if only all liars would get such a lock on their mouths, then we would have love and friendship instead of hate and slander. Right.

[Ben Manus]

Love it. Enlightenment.

[Pat Wright]

Well, this is smack dab enlightenment work. Mozart is a man of the enlightenment. His compatriots were men of the enlightenment. And Freemasonry, for that matter, really thrives during the Enlightenment period. This age of reason and thought and rationality.

[Ben Manus]

Absolutely. And it's so interesting that in this same number we're in the middle of a quintet now between Tamino, Papageno and the three ladies where they sing exactly the line that you just quoted. And the next thing that they do is sort of unenlightenment. It's all again, back to the fairy tale. Because what they do is they give Tamino and Papageno these two items that are going to be very important and that will help them in their quest.

[Pat Wright]

Our titular magic flute.

[Ben Manus]

That's exactly right. They give Tamino a magic flute and they give Papageno a magic glockenspiel. And they basically say, these will aid you in your darkest moments. Take them and save Pamina.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, and good luck. No instruction manual included.

[Ben Manus]

Right, right. Which is exactly why at the end of the quintet, Papageno and Tamina say, oh, yeah, by the way, where is she? Where are we supposed to go to save her?

[Pat Wright]

Because no one has told us yet we're gung ho. But. Well, actually, Tamino is gung ho, but.

[Ben Manus]

He'S a little scared.

[Pat Wright]

But he's told by the ladies, you must go with Tamino. He's a prince. He'll protect you. You'll be fine. Don't be scared, little man. He will protect you, but you must accompany him. I feel he's a little like a Sancho pazza.

[Ben Manus]

Oh, totally. I mean, it's a character type.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

You know, he's sort of the bumbling sidekick in many ways.

[Pat Wright]

He is.

[Ben Manus]

But the ladies, in fact, say, they don't even answer, where is Pamina? They say, well, there's gonna be these three boys who come and they're going to guide your way, so follow them.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. And they are kind of an interesting. The second group of three that you told us to expect. It's very interesting that in most productions and even in the earliest productions, when stage machinery, if you could have it, it was wow to the audience, they kind of float above in Some fashion, oftentimes on a little platform or in a little gondola kind of contraption.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, they're sort of almost heavenly. Yeah, they're sort of like fairy boys.

[Pat Wright]

With, like, wings and maybe they might be. Or, you know, I've seen them depicted so many ways. But you need good boy singers.

[Ben Manus]

Oh, yes, no question.

[Pat Wright]

And I understand. I've never seen it this way, but I understand sometimes if you can't find the boys who do it, they do use women who can hit these notes, but it's boys before their voices have changed and there's a sweetness, an impurity to the three of them singing together.

[Ben Manus]

Absolutely. Well, you're exactly right. I mean, it's hard singing and they actually sing a fair bit in the opera, they have at least one number which is only them. I have seen it where one of the boys was a girl, not a woman, but a girl who still has that same kind of youthfulness to her voice. But yes, a female for sure. I mean, the most important thing, I think, is that the three boys, and this is why they're often portrayed in the way that you just suggested, is that they are contrasted with the three women, that they are counterparts. We have three henchmen of the bad guys and three henchmen of the good guys. And at this point in the opera, we're still not sure which is which.

[Pat Wright]

Well, of course we're not, because it's the three women who say you will be guided by these three boys on your quest. So there's a clear consideration of good and evil, right and wrong, dark and light in this show. And yet it's not as absolute as we might want it to be that we've got. These boys are somehow coming out of the Queen of the Nights realm. Papageno is part of her realm. And we're going to see in Sarastro's realm coming up that not everyone there is 100% good and virtuous.

[Ben Manus]

Well, that's exactly right. In fact, the next character that we meet as the quintet ends and Tamino and Papageno go on their way, the next character that we meet is Monostatos, who is a servant of Zoroastro and he is no great man himself. He comes in leading. Well, they're in the score, they are called a band of slaves of his and he has captured Pamina. And so they're the next characters that we see.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, and in the dialogue, before he even speaks, we have this band of henchmen, these slaves, talking about how much they hate him. He's so bad that they're not really characters. They're just like this mass of people who are unhappy and threatening.

[Ben Manus]

Right.

[Pat Wright]

But they hate him. And they're cheering the fact that Pamina has just escaped. But not for long.

[Ben Manus]

Not for long.

[Pat Wright]

He has recaptured her and he tells his slaves to get chained so that she can be restrained again and chained up. And then it gets really yucky. Can I just say.

[Ben Manus]

Sure.

[Pat Wright]

It gets kind of creepy. It could make your skin crawl, depending on how it's depicted on stage. But. But he would like a little alone time with Pamina.

[Ben Manus]

Yes.

[Pat Wright]

And fortunately, at this point, Papageno bumbles in and Papageno. I see Monastatos and Papageno a little bit as counterpoints. Papageno being the kind of every man who's good in this bad realm and Monastatos, this ordinary guy who's bad in the good realm.

[Ben Manus]

Interesting.

[Pat Wright]

And they scare each other in this scene. They both will talk about how they're frightened of this other guy. He must be the devil.

[Ben Manus]

Well, it's actually. They do see each other exactly as counterparts in this number. And it actually goes very quickly from being dark and creepy, as you just mentioned, to being actually quite funny when they both run away from each other because they both think the other one is the devil.

[Pat Wright]

Right.

[Ben Manus]

And they actually say at the same time, oh, my God, it's the devil. And they start sort of trying to scare each other. And it's actually written very interestingly in the score. They both start saying at the same time. They sort of start making noises at each other. It's written, hu in the score, Hu. And frequently it is done on stage as Papageno scaring off Monostatos. As in, oh, Papageno realizes, oh, he thinks I'm the devil. I'm gonna make these scary noises to make sure he runs away. And Monostatos does, in fact, run away, leaving Pamina and Papageno together for the next scene.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. Or they can both run off. She has a moment to be sad, call for her mother. And then Papageno tiptoes his way back in and he is now in possession of this portrait of her.

[Ben Manus]

Right.

[Pat Wright]

And we get another comic scene.

[Ben Manus]

We do. And in fact, Mozart says in stage direction. Well, I don't know if Mozart said it, but it says in the stage direction in the score, they both run off. But frequently that is not how it is actually done.

[Pat Wright]

Interesting. Well, it. You know, you can make it work either way.

[Ben Manus]

Stage directions in opera scores are never followed. So it really doesn't matter.

[Pat Wright]

Or selectively so, I guess. Well, he confirms with the picture that it's her. Which is it? That is such a comic scene. He's like, yep, brown hair. Yep, yep. Oh, wait, no, this can't be you because you have hands and feet, and this picture doesn't have hands. I mean, they're just. They have a lot of fun with that. But the most important revelation is that Papageno says, yes. Oh, you're chained up. Yeah, I can't help you, but there's a prince, he's going to rescue you. And she's like, you're kidding, Just unchain me, please. And he says, yeah, but the prince, he's going to rescue you and he loves you. Well, and then she's gone. Like, the thought that a prince loves her and she's not even looking at a picture now. She's just had Papageno mention him and she's fallen in love already.

[Ben Manus]

Happened to him. Happens to her.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Manus]

So after Papageno does in fact confirm that Pamina is who she is, tells her about the prince, she falls in love, and then they sing a gorgeous duet, which is in some ways the counterpart of Tamino's aria earlier in the piece where he has just seen her portrait, he sings an aria about how he loves her. She has just heard that the prince loves her, and now they, she and Papageno together sing this duet about the sweetness and purity of love and the nobleness of man and wife. So let's listen to a little bit of that. I.

[Pat Wright]

I love a duet about love that isn't necessarily between the two people who are in love with each other.

[Ben Manus]

Right.

[Pat Wright]

I think that's a fun little touch.

[Ben Manus]

It's so unique. I mean, we think of love duet as to lovers, but this is a duet, it's not really a love duet. It's a duet about love.

[Pat Wright]

Well, sure, yes, yes. And it also includes some of that moralizing that I've mentioned before. Love alone makes us happy. Love alone makes life worthwhile for husband and wife. For wife and husband, love becomes a divine union. And there are a lot of references to the divine, to gods, throughout the this show.

[Ben Manus]

Well, I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Pat Wright]

Well, I just read from a translation of the libretto, so. But it is a celebration of marital love, among other things.

[Ben Manus]

Totally. Even though they're not married and haven't even met each other yet. But, you know, it's a fairy tale.

[Pat Wright]

It's a fairy tale. And she's found her prince. She hasn't met her prince, but she's identified the prince that she's going to fall in love with. After all, she is a princess. Her mother's the queen. And Papageno's already let us know in his introduction song that he wants to find a sweet woman who can be his wife.

[Ben Manus]

Right. You know, it's actually interesting that this duet happens between Papageno and Pamina because their fate towards the end of the second act will become very linked in the Act 2 finale. They both have their own respective suicide scenes.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

And we will. I know we'll get there in due course. But it's just an interesting way of weaving together these two characters, even though they're not the two main characters, so to speak. They both have these sort of symmetrical scenes. In the Act 2 finale, one of them winds up being very serious and one of them sort of winds up being kind of a comedic scene. Neither one of them actually die.

[Pat Wright]

I was gonna say there are no spoilers in opera. We need to say that both of these people are stopped from taking that step and they do end up with partners. Again, no spoilers in opera. But we're going to tell you how we get there.

[Ben Manus]

Yes. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. First, we have the Act 1 finale.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, we need to get there.

[Ben Manus]

But what goes straight into the finale?

[Pat Wright]

The finale already. But we're quite a ways from the end of Act 1.

[Ben Manus]

We are in Mozart, his act finales tend to be very long. I mean, I don't know exactly how long these are, but in Figaro, for instance, the famous Act 2 finale is. It's gotta be close to 20 minutes.

[Pat Wright]

It builds and builds, adding characters and voices.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, that's the most extraordinary finale of any act in opera. But this is similar to that. It's many scenes that comprise the finale, but it's one extended piece of music with no dialogue in between. And in the score, it is written as finale. Even though we have many characters and many scenes within the finale.

[Pat Wright]

Many scenes within the finale. I would not necessarily have identified that.

[Ben Manus]

Without help, but that's what I'm here for.

[Pat Wright]

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so how do we begin our finale?

[Ben Manus]

We begin our finale with the appearance of the three boys, okay. Who were foretold by the three ladies that these three boys would appear, they would show you the way to Pamina. And in fact, they do appear. And they say to Tamino to basically be a man and save her.

[Pat Wright]

Be steadfast, be patient, be discreet.

[Ben Manus]

Yes. In fact, they literally tell him, be A man?

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

And then, then you'll be victorious in manly fashion.

[Pat Wright]

Well, it's part of this coming of age story, this growing up.

[Ben Manus]

Right. Although it is ironic that he's being told that by three boys.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, but I don't think they're really boys or like these heavenly creatures. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's fairy tale logic. It's dream logic.

[Ben Manus]

There you go.

[Pat Wright]

We just run with it. But he says, okay, you guys know stuff. Tell me about Pamina. Is she alive? She's been captured by this terrible, awful person. Her mother told me so. Is she even alive?

[Ben Manus]

Right. So this is the next scene of the finale. This is a scene which is colloquially known as the Sprecher. Scene means speaker.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

Which is the title of one of the characters in this scene. He's only referred to as the speaker, even though in fact he sings and does not speak. This is a unique scene in all of Mozart's operas because it is essentially a kind of recitative that we would get in something like Wagner. I mean, it's not uncommon in Mozart's Italian operas to have a recitative before an aria, for instance, which would be accompanied by the orchestra. We have that in Figaro, for instance, before Dovesono or before the counts aria in Act 3 of Figaro. What I mean by retroditif is an opportunity for plot to happen. A lot of text is happening. It's not the classic aria where, okay, there's three lines of text and the aria is seven minutes long because you say each line 14 times. This is the movement of plot. And musically what is happening is there's frequent, for instance, changes of tempo. This bar is half as fast as that bar. Even though nothing's written. This is just how this piece is performed.

[Pat Wright]

Is this why you compared it to Wagner?

[Ben Manus]

Yes, yes. It's very Wagnerian in the way that it's also sort of through composed. It's not an aria, it's not a duet, a quintet. It is just an encounter between Tamino and the Sprecher. And also the chorus singing from within Zoroastro's temple.

[Pat Wright]

So you said it was unique in Mozart's music. I'm guessing that also means it's not done prior to Mozart, but it does point the way to the future. Potentially.

[Ben Manus]

It certainly points the way to the future. I would not be certain in saying that it doesn't happen. I know that's hard, Mozart, but it is. I mean, I'm looking at it now. Okay, he writes recitativo in bar 39 of the Act 1 finale. I'm going forward, I'm going forward. And the next thing we have is in bar 160. Okay, so that's. Let me do some quick math. 121 bars of recitativo. That is certainly unheard of in Mozart. I mean, if you had a recitativo at the beginning of a Javinta la causa, the count aria from Act 3 of Figaro, that's I'm guessing 20 something bars. This is an eight minute scene which is all recitative.

[Pat Wright]

Okay. And this is the. The speaker scene.

[Ben Manus]

This is the speaker scene. And I will tell you, actually, I have some personal history with this scene. I was for several years a student at the Aspen Music Festival in school. I was a conducting student for three summers. And every summer, I think there was 12 conductors every summer. And every summer we would have to do this scene for our teacher. And what I mean by that is perform it. Perform it without an orchestra. Somebody would play piano, they would be the orchestra, and then somebody would conduct. And two of the other conductors would sing the two roles. One would be Tamino, one would be the spracher. And then we would all rotate people.

[Pat Wright]

Who were there to be conductors. You needed to be opera singers as well?

[Ben Manus]

Well, yes. I mean, you needed to at least be able to say the right words at the right time at approximately the right pitch, and then you would rotate. So over the course of that afternoon, everybody would have the opportunity to conduct it, to sing the role of Tamino and sing the role of the sprecher. And let me tell you, the reason we had to do that is because it is really hard. It's a lot of text, it's a lot of tempo changes of catching the singer at this particular corner. And you know, this bar happens to be twice as fast as that bar. And how do you do it? How do you make it work? And so it's very important to be able to do that. It's sort of like if you can do this, you can sort of do anything. And that's why we had to do it every single year. Everybody in the class had to do it. So I know this scene very, very well, even outside of my experience with the entire opera, just from doing this scene at Aspen.

[Pat Wright]

Wow. But I won't ask you to sing it for us unless you want to.

[Ben Manus]

I don't. I've done it enough.

[Pat Wright]

Okay. That's fascinating. Are there other. Was it Mozart in particular that you were focusing on or just amongst the great buffet of Music to choose from. This was what was chosen?

[Ben Manus]

Yes, the latter. I mean, this is notorious. It's sort of the hardest thing in opera to conduct also, just to sort of make it work. It's such a unique moment in opera. Well, so this was in Aspen. This was what we would call a technique check. Tech check.

[Pat Wright]

Oh, sure.

[Ben Manus]

And we had three of them over the course of the summer. It was always the same. It was this, it was the very beginning of Beethoven 5, which is a notorious conducting pitfall. And it was the first part of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, which we would do with a student soloist.

[Pat Wright]

Wow.

[Ben Manus]

And so those were the three that we always had to do. And it was sort of a rite of passage. It's like, well, you know, you're going to have to do it. It's hard. So we're just going to make everybody do it every year and make sure you got it.

[Pat Wright]

Wow. And then once you. It's like the trials that Tamina's going to have to go through.

[Ben Manus]

Exactly. It's the waterfall and the fire and all of that Stu.

[Pat Wright]

Wow. Wow. Okay, well, while we're talking about conducting, learning to be a conductor, could I just ask how you chose to get into this line of work?

[Ben Manus]

Well, sure. I'm a cellist. Or I should say I was a cellist. I studied cello in undergrad and of course I played growing up from the time I was six. And I never was particularly interested in playing in an orchestra, but I was very interested in playing in chamber music, especially in a string quartet, which I really wanted to do in college and which I did do in college. I was in a serious quartet and we broke up. It's like being in a rock band. Sometimes you just break up. So then I started being interested in conducting. I mean, seriously interested in conducting. I was that kid, I grew up in Chicago. I was that kid, the 10 year old at the Chicago Symphony concert, sitting there with the score for Mahler 5 or whatever they happened to be playing.

[Pat Wright]

In your lap while you're watching the performance.

[Ben Manus]

Sure, yeah, of course, of course.

[Pat Wright]

Because you look around and no one else is doing that.

[Ben Manus]

Well, no, but if you're doing that, you're definitely a kid and you're definitely sort of obsessed.

[Pat Wright]

You. You love it. Okay.

[Ben Manus]

So I'd always been interested in conducting, but then that was what made me, you know, when, when the quartet sort of stopped happening, that was what really made me want to switch. And you know, the hardest thing about getting started conducting is finding something to conduct because it's not like playing piano or something where you can go in the practice room and practice to your heart's content. You need other people to be able to do it. And that's very hard to get. And so I started the same way, really. A lot of people start conducting, which is, I just asked all my friends to come play this Mozart symphony for an hour on Thursday night, and I'll have beer and Domino's Pizza for you after. And college kids, they're not going to say no to that. So that was sort of the first thing I did. And then you're really hooked from there, or at least I was. And so that was the beginning of it.

[Pat Wright]

And do you reimagine a piece like, how do you first say, okay, there's this piece that I'm going to do, and whatever the context is, either it's your friends or it's something you've been hired to do. Do you listen to other pieces, remember other concerts you've attended, or do you just reimagine it for yourself? Fresh. And are you hearing it when you look at that inscrutable notation on the page there? I'm gesturing at your score.

[Ben Manus]

Well, certainly you hear it. I mean, you always want to. I don't sit down with the intention of making something fresh. I do listen to recordings, of course. Well, I shouldn't say of course. There are some conductors who say not to do that. I think the most important thing, though, is that you don't listen to just one recording, because then inevitably you will just try to imitate it, because that's how it goes in your head. The Magic Flute has been performed so many times. For instance, the Magic Flute, I can't imagine that I would make it fresh or that anybody particularly could make it truly fresh and new.

[Pat Wright]

Well, if it was all that different, maybe we wouldn't be happy with it.

[Ben Manus]

Maybe. But you try to do your best to make it sound the way you think Mozart would have wanted it to sound based on what he told us in the score. Different conductors will balance differently between, well, what would the composer have wanted and what do I want? That's a whole nother philosophical question. But, no, I don't think. I don't know, really. Any conductor who sits down and thinks, how can I make this sound? Like, how can I make it the way no one's ever done it before? No, you try to be true to how you feel it needs to be.

[Pat Wright]

And do you, or would you like to be specializing in any particular period of music?

[Ben Manus]

I don't and I would not like to. I have a lot of respect for people who do, especially people who specialize in Baroque music or even pre Baroque music, because there's so much scholarship that goes into that, so much knowledge. And when I do a piece like that, like I did Dido and Aeneas last year of Persil, I absolutely consult with those people. But I am not that, and I don't want to be. I mean, there's too much great music.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned Purcell not long ago on Opera for Everyone, we did the Fairy Queen by Pen, which I.

[Ben Manus]

Don'T know at all. I'll tell you.

[Pat Wright]

Oh, it's magnificent. I really fell in love with it. It's an interesting piece. You can always listen to the episode.

[Ben Manus]

I will have to. I mean, I am a huge Purcell fan. I think his music is spectacular, and I had a blast doing Dido. But, no, I don't have the kind of background, scholarly knowledge that a true expert in that kind of music does have.

[Pat Wright]

Right, so you're doing well. Mozart's 18th century. You're doing some 19th century. 20th and 21st.

[Ben Manus]

21St, yes.

[Pat Wright]

Nice. Very nice. Well, this is Ben Manus. You will see his name all throughout the music world. I'm convinced of it.

[Ben Manus]

I hope so.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

Thank you for your confidence.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, absolutely. Okay. The speaker scene, should we hear just a little bit of it?

[Ben Manus]

Why not? So what you just heard there is a little bit of the dialogue between Tamino and the sprecher. And what's interesting about it, part of what makes it so obviously recitative is the real lack of melody. Yes, it's very sort of disjointed musically in terms of what the orchestra is doing. Frequently they're not playing at all, and someone's just singing. And then they'll just put a little sort of punctuation mark or a very short little tidbit that just expresses a little bit of the emotion of what's happening in the conversation. But it's not one of these, oh, my God, listen to this gorgeous Mozart melody kind of moments. It really is about having a conversation. That's what that music is about.

[Pat Wright]

And what a conversation it is.

[Ben Manus]

Well, and it is very important.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

Tamino asks. He's speaking at this point, sort of through the walls of Zoroastria's temple to the speaker and to this chorus from within.

[Pat Wright]

Right. Because he's tried two doors and they've shouted. The offstage unseen voices have shouted, go back. Go back.

[Ben Manus]

That's right.

[Pat Wright]

But the speaker does Speak to him at the third door.

[Ben Manus]

The speaker does speak to him. And the most important thing, he asks two questions that the chorus answers. First he asks, oh, dark night, when will you disappear? When will the light find my eyes? And they say, soon. And then ominously, or never.

[Pat Wright]

Or never.

[Ben Manus]

And then he says, okay, well, is Pamina alive? And they say, she is. She is alive. And so he has this very joyful moment, and then he does a very important thing in a piece called the Magic Flute.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, he does.

[Ben Manus]

He takes out his good old magic Flute.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

And plays it.

[Pat Wright]

Yes. And he gives thanks to the Almighty One before he actually plays on this flute. He is thankful for this. This item, by the way, which was presented to him courtesy of the Knights.

[Ben Manus]

Of the gods that you mentioned.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're shot through this whole story.

[Ben Manus]

Well, let's listen to a little bit of the Magic Flute playing, which nobody will be surprised to hear is played by the flutist in the orchestra.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, yes. I even saw a production where he actually walks up from the orchestra pit and stands or sits next to Tamino and showing us that, yes, I am indeed playing it, but it's that Tamino has handed him the flute. And it's charming. Honestly, I love sometimes the interaction that a director will organize between the musicians in the orchestra pit and the performers on stage. It can be charming.

[Ben Manus]

You need a pit where it's easy to get on stage.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. You need some stairs.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah.

[Pat Wright]

Well, that was the Magic Flute, and we hear that tune, we know that Tamino is playing his flute. Interestingly, when he does this here we see some of the magical properties, maybe not what he intended, but traditionally you have the wild beasts of the forests, or wherever they are, come on stage and they're lulled and they're dancing and they're happy. Only while he's playing the flute, they disappear once he stops playing.

[Ben Manus]

Right.

[Pat Wright]

That doesn't come up again, but it's just an interesting little tidbit.

[Ben Manus]

It does. It does not come up again at all. But it's sort of another connection between his Magic Flute and Papageno's pipes and flute, sort of his. The bird call, birdness, which we're going to see just shortly here.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, that's right. And just one quick comment about this Magic Flute. It will be explained a little bit toward the very end of the show that this Magic Flute is just not some random flute. Why it is magic is that Pamina's father has made it. That's why the queen originally possessed it. And it's often described as a golden flute, but truly it's a gilt flute because it's made from the. I believe it's an oak tree.

[Ben Manus]

Thousand year old oak tree.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, yes. That he went and got these roots in this thunderstorm. So there's thunder, fire, rain, water, earth that he's digging up, air that you blow through the fruit. These elements that are basic and they're important in the Masonic worldview as well.

[Ben Manus]

And they become part of Tamino's trials in Act 2.

[Pat Wright]

Exactly.

[Ben Manus]

His water and fire trials.

[Pat Wright]

Right. The Masonic elements. It's very interesting. Like we said, you could focus all your attention on the Masonic elements that are dropped throughout and they are there. In fact, one of the best things short reviews I read of it was Goethe, the famous German writer who said, oh, people can just go and enjoy the music and enjoy the fairy tale, but those of us who know, we see the Masonic symbols, all the initiates, they know what's going on.

[Ben Manus]

If you're in the club, if you know, you know.

[Pat Wright]

And otherwise it's like you can have things for children and adults, you know, that's kind of the idea. Goethe loved this show so much that he started writing A Magic Flute Part 2. It was never.

[Ben Manus]

Is that right?

[Pat Wright]

Oh, he did. I didn't know that he couldn't find a composer. Nobody wanted to follow in Mozart's footsteps.

[Ben Manus]

I don't blame them.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, but he did. He wrote this and he published part of it and he published another. It's not a complete work and I don't think anyone's picked it up to do it. But Goethe, I mean, the man who wrote Faust, the Sorrows of the Young Werther, all of which been made into, well, multiple different operas. Faust in particular, but he wanted to tackle expanding the story of the Magic Flute.

[Ben Manus]

Wow, that's fascinating. I did not know that.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's fun when you start digging into. I mean, you may do a lot with your score on your lap, but I dig into things in books and it's delightful what you find.

[Ben Manus]

Well, maybe I should do more book digging instead of score digging.

[Pat Wright]

Well, I'll hook you up if you want me to. Well, we're going to hear just a little bit more music from this lengthy finale.

[Ben Manus]

Yes. And in particular, what we're going to hear is the moment where Tamino and Papageno, who have been separated and are looking for each other. Papageno is still with Pamina. They're still together after their duet about love that we heard a little earlier in the show. They're trying to find each other. And so Tamino is playing his flute and he's saying, oh, where are they? If only I could find them. And oh, if only. And then suddenly there it is, Papageno's little pipe call. So we will hear. Both of.

[Pat Wright]

You'Re listening to Opera for Everyone, a radio show and podcast that makes opera understandable, accessible and enjoyable for everyone. Opera for Everyone airs Sundays from 9 to 11am Mountain Time on 80 91, Khol, Wyoming's only community radio station. If you'd like to hear more conversations about opera, please subscribe to the Opera for Everyone podcast. And if you subscribe, rate and review us, you'll be helping with our mission to bring opera to everyone by helping others to find this show. Stay with us. The second half of today's show is coming right up.

[Ben Manus]

Songs.

[Pat Wright]

Welcome back to the second half of Opera for Everyone. We are talking about Mozart's Magic Flute, Die Zauber Flute today, and I am your host, Pat Wright. I am here with conductor Ben Manus. Ben, welcome back.

[Ben Manus]

Great to be back. Let's do it.

[Pat Wright]

So much more to talk about. But before we talk about any more of the story, we'd like to thank the people who made this wonderful CD that we've been listening to.

[Ben Manus]

So the recording that we are listening to is a great recording. The Academy of St Martin in the Fields Orchestra conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. And some of the singers here we have Zorastro, who we have yet to meet is Sam Raimi. The Queen of the night is Cheryl Stewder. Pamina is Kiri Takanua. Tamino is Francisco Araiza Papageno. Olaf Baer, Papagena, who we're gonna read at the very end, Eva Lind. And the sprecher is Jose Van Damme.

[Pat Wright]

Wonderful work everyone. Thank you for this beautiful music. Oh, this is recorded in 1989. So glad to have this CD. And I'm glad you like it.

[Ben Manus]

One of several from your collection.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, I have a ridiculous number of.

[Ben Manus]

Opera CDs, but they're right behind you.

[Pat Wright]

That's the expected. Yes. Be careful, they might fall on you. Okay, well, this is typically when we do the opera helmet quiz and I understand.

[Ben Manus]

Oh, right, I forgot about that.

[Pat Wright]

Everyone always forgets about the opera helmet quiz. It's not really a quiz, it's just a recap. Although I do have one co recorder who likes to actually quiz.

[Ben Manus]

Ah, okay.

[Pat Wright]

But it's a recap of what we've done so far. We didn't quite get through the first act. Although we did start the finale of Act 1. It's a two act opera, two act singspiel.

[Ben Manus]

There you go.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. Do you want to just tell us again what a singspiel is?

[Ben Manus]

A singspiel is a sort of operetta, I would say it's musical numbers interspersed with dialogue which you would not have in a more traditional opera like Mozart's earlier operas, for instance, the Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni or something like that. And it is importantly written in vernacular. That's why the Magic Flute is in German. Most of Mozart's operas are in Italian, though of course he was not Italian.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, and I understand he wanted to do more German heritage sorts of operas. But we do have this story which in some ways echoes back to elements of fairy tales in the culture and in some ways has these Masonic ideas. Zoroastro, we haven't mentioned this yet, but it's not really a recap.

[Ben Manus]

But yeah, I'm waiting for my recap.

[Pat Wright]

It's a version of Zoroaster. There's a little Zoroastrianism that sneaks in here. But the recap is we have this wonderful handsome prince and a dragon and he falls down unconscious out of arrows, can't kill the, the serpent, but the serpent is in fact killed by three ladies who are nearby and they sing beautifully together, by the way. These three ladies who work for the queen of that realm, known as the Queen of the Night, they kill the serpent and they say, oh, you're just the man to do the most important job that the queen has, which is rescue her daughter who was captured by the evil Sarastro. Meantime, another person shows up on the scene. He looks a little disheveled, he's a bird catcher. He sells his birds to the Queen of the Night. Don't ask too many questions about that. I don't think she treats the birds very nicely. And he becomes the new best friend of Tamino and he ends up getting wrapped up in this quest that this knight errant, this Prince Tamino is tasked with doing. He meets the Queen of the Night, scary lady who sings hi. And the Queen of the Night says, you, you, you, you are the man to save my daughter from the wicked man who captured her and is holding her captive. I am a bereft mother and I require your help. Well, all of his chivalrous instincts have been activated and he agrees to go on this quest. And his friend Papageno says, fighting's not my thing, no thanks. But they say he must go and we've Also learned that, by the way, and this is going to keep continuing to come up he'd like to have a lady friend and maybe he'll just. He's lonely so they give Tamino a picture of the young woman he's supposed to rescue he falls madly in love with the picture he sings about how madly in love he is with this picture and off they go oh, by the way, there'll be three boys who drop in and give you guidance and help you understand how to find oh, and also we have some implements for you, some goodies for you, Tamino It's a flute that's magical and for you, Papageno, it's. It's a set of bells, it's a glockenspiel and off they go but without much explanation, Papageno does find Pamina she has just been recaptured by the evil man, interestingly, in Sarastro's kingdom But this man who has been charged with keeping track of her, she had escaped, she's recaptured he is slimy and lecherous towards her but when Papageno shows up, they scare each other off Papageno returns and he says, ah, don't worry, pretty lady, there's a prince who's going to come rescue you he's in love with you well, that's. That sends her heart aflutter but she's still worried about her mother and they both sing about the joys of being in love and honestly, the virtue of marital love they both wish that not with each other, but with other folks Then we have those three boys that were promised they show up and they give Tamino, who is on stage a pep talk I would say be strong, courageous, discreet these ideals of manhood Tamina, who is becoming a man through this and ultimately will win the heart of a woman well, he's kind of already got her heart, but he will win her hand they still haven't met each other, though yeah, that's true, that's true so they give him this pep talk and he is convinced that he can do what must be done of course, right now he thinks what must be done is rescue her from Sarastro, that will change and he goes on his quest where he knocks at the doors of three temples, told to go back at two and meets the infamous speaker at the third door, the door of wisdom and at this door of wisdom he is going to be told, well, you know, vengeance, we're not real big on vengeance here, we're an enlightened kingdom and vengeance, that's one of the Dark emotions. Pamina is alive, she still lives. And he's very relieved to hear that. And he pulls out his flute and he plays this magical flute and it subdues the animals. The animals weren't around before, needing to be subdued, but they show up so that we can see that they're subdued. Music, very important, soothes the savage beast. Right, exactly. And he does eventually reconnect with Papageno.

[Ben Manus]

And that's where we just left off when Tamino plays his flute and Papageno plays his pipes back. So they hear each other and now they just need to find each other.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, it's like the old game of Marco Polo.

[Ben Manus]

It's exactly what it is. So Tamino runs off to find them. Meanwhile, Pamina and Papageno run on stage looking for Tamino, who of course has just left literally two bars earlier.

[Pat Wright]

Well, you know, stagecraft, stagecraft.

[Ben Manus]

It's a classic obstacle for a director here actually, is to make it not look ridiculous.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

Because there's no time in between when Tamino runs off and Papageno and Pamina run on and they're supposed to be looking for each other, so.

[Pat Wright]

But they're facing the wrong way, you.

[Ben Manus]

Know, something like that.

[Pat Wright]

But when all this is happening, we're going to see Monastatos again.

[Ben Manus]

We sure are. So first Papageno is going to play his flute again, he's going to hear in the distance Tamino answering.

[Pat Wright]

Right.

[Ben Manus]

The opposite of what we had before where Tamino played his flute and he hears in the distance Papagino answering. So they run off. They're happy. They run off and they run straight into the arms of Monostatos and his band of henchmen.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. And they're getting ready to be captured. The game is up. Whoa, no. What are we going to do? And well, it turns out they. They actually have something to fight back with.

[Ben Manus]

They do. We had the Magic Flute and now we are going to see the other gift that the three ladies gave to Tamino and Papageno. He is going to play his glockenspiel, his magic glockenspiel, and it is going to lull Monostatos and his henchmen into sort of a musical coma where all they can do is sing about. Oh, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.

[Pat Wright]

And there's a bunch of La La Ing too.

[Ben Manus]

It's kind of a. It's almost like a kick line moment.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, it's actually. It's hard to take this scene seriously. I mean, there's just A lot of comedy in this, even with all the moralizing that goes on and the Dark Queen of the Night and the great Sarastro. This is so silly. This is just silly.

[Ben Manus]

Well, it is silly, absolutely. And actually, after they play the Glock and they successfully escape, we meet for the first time the full chorus singing, usually off stage, this is. But they have finally found the entrance to the temple, which is very scary to both Papageno and Pamina because at this point they still believe that Sarastro is the evil villain.

[Pat Wright]

Right. Going into his temple, which looks imposing, typically.

[Ben Manus]

Yes.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

Columns and pillars and things.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. I'm just going to back up and add one other little thing, by the way, we ran past our recap and we are. Oh, yes, we're going into the future, charging forward here. But after they've played the glockenspiel and successfully gotten rid of the bad guys, the two of them, Pamina and Papageno, once again give us a moral to take home with us would be that if everyone had this kind of music. Oh, if he could just easily dispel of his enemies, if he had this music at his hands, and then he could live a peaceful life. Only friendship's harmony eases all hardships. They want us to know.

[Ben Manus]

I love it. And actually, that's not even the moral that I thought you were gonna say what I thought you were gonna say happens right after that when they're terrified to be there in front of Zoroastro, and Papagena says, what are we gonna say? And Pamina says, the truth, even if it's a crime.

[Pat Wright]

That's right. That's right.

[Ben Manus]

So there's another. There's some more moralizing for you.

[Pat Wright]

There's some more moralizing. And it's also an indication of her ranking in all these characters, like Tamino, this prince, who's this elevated character who has a lot of responsibility placed on him. She is this princess who has elevated morals as well, which are not necessarily the same as Papageno's. He's a little more practical. He's interested about eating and drinking, and he would like to find someone to keep him company for the rest of his life.

[Ben Manus]

Right.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

So the next thing that happens is we hear of Zoroastro's entrance music, and this is the choral number. Sometimes Zoroastro comes out of the temple, sometimes we sort of go into the temple. But in any case, they're singing Long Live Zoroastro and he comes out and actually the first thing that happens, he doesn't say anything. Pamina takes it upon herself and she sort of kneels at his feet and begs forgiveness, essentially. And Sarastro has a very interesting answer. So maybe we should listen to that moment, Sarastro's first sung lines and then we can talk about it. So that is Zoroastro's first entrance of the piece. And the first thing you notice is his voice.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

Big bass voice, which we do not have any of in this piece, certainly up till now. We have Tamino the tenor, we have Papageno the baritone. We have the three boys who are essentially sopranos. And then we have this big basso profundo voice.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, gravitas.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, One of the great bass roles. Even though again, he doesn't sing that much, but it's still a great role. So it's always interesting. We have, until this time, Zoroastrio has been only referred to as a bad guy. Here we are. Papageno's terrified. In front of him, Amina literally gets on her knees and the first thing he says is, stand up, be cheered. He's not who we thought he was. He says, actually without even asking you, I know what's in your heart. I know that you love someone.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

So this is what tells us a lot about his character. He says, I'm not going to force you to love anybody, but I'm also not going to give you your freedom.

[Pat Wright]

Just yet because that would be bad for you. He explains.

[Ben Manus]

Yes, I mean, we can certainly get into. There's an awful lot of paternalism, misogynism happening here.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, I mean, I would argue definitely paternalism. And a lot of the misogynistic comments, I think have to do with the fact that they're trying to draw a contrast between good behavior and bad behavior. This dark and light Queen of the night Sarastro is this sun day time. And I think a lot of the text you could even understand as you need someone to be the good guy, you need someone to be the bad guy and they make the women the bad guy. Or that men need to avoid the temptations that women pose. Because we all know men can do silly things when they are thinking about women or trying to please women.

[Ben Manus]

That's very charitable of you.

[Pat Wright]

It is charitable of me. That's true. I mean, I wish everyone could see the look on Ben men's face right now.

[Ben Manus]

You certainly could understand it that way. A lot of it maybe you would say is based on antiquated ideas of gender norms.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. This is 1791, by the way, of.

[Ben Manus]

Women need to be led by men of, you know, it's the man who governs the heart. And it is the portrayal of, essentially, in much of this opera, the bad as feminine and the good as masculine.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, it has a little bit of feel of the yin yang view of the world. Not that that was Mozart's world.

[Ben Manus]

Sure.

[Pat Wright]

But yeah, it's interesting. This is an Enlightenment piece. And we do also, however, in this opera, as opposed to Freemasonry, where these Masons, that all these Masons we've referred to are men and they were exclusively male institutions. There were female chapters, but they weren't co ed, you know, they were separate and they were considered to be less than. But in this story, part of what is going to have to happen is Pamina is going to have to be joined together with Tamino and that's how they're going to bring the world into balance. So Pamina's role, like her mother, may be the incarnation of evil for the sake of this story, but Pamina is not. She is part of this, this elevated couple at the end, which is interesting, is not.

[Ben Manus]

And they do certainly need each other, but I would say clearly not in an equal way.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, no, yeah, I, I agree. I agree with you. Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

Well, anyways, let's continue with our story here. So the next thing that happens after Zoroastro says his little opening bit is Monostatos shows up and brings in Tamino. Yeah.

[Pat Wright]

And he's like, hey, boss, look.

[Ben Manus]

What? Yeah. He's like, didn't I do such a great job?

[Pat Wright]

I brought reward me, sir.

[Ben Manus]

Exactly. Well, first, Tamino and Pamina, who have now just now seen each other actually for the very first time I know, have this very sweet little moment of oh my God, it's him. Oh my God, it's her. I can't believe it. It must be a dream. And then we have a very sort of classic moment of the evil henchman does something and comes to his boss and says, oh, I expect this big reward. And Zoroastra says, okay, sure, here's your reward. We're going to give you 70 lashes. On your feet. Good for you. And Monosthetos is, as you can imagine, very upset by this.

[Pat Wright]

And also during the part when Pamina has thrown herself at Sarastro's feet to confess that she had escaped, she's telling the truth. She did say, I need you to know the man put in charge of my captivity treated me badly.

[Ben Manus]

That's true.

[Pat Wright]

He was trying to demand my love. We might say Euphemistically.

[Ben Manus]

It was, yes, very euphemistically. Yeah, that's true. That's very important to note as part of the reason why Zoroastria reacts the way he does and decides to punish Monostatos.

[Pat Wright]

Yes. Yeah. And so Monostatos is going to be. We're going to see him again. But why is he in this world in the first place? Well, there's always some evil where good things are, but he. He's going to go back where he belongs, ultimately.

[Ben Manus]

Right, so to round out the very end of act one.

[Pat Wright]

Yes. We're going to finish our finale finally.

[Ben Manus]

Yes, we've been in the finale for a long time. After Monostatos runs away, having received his reward, we have a brief little choral interlude where they praise Zoroastro's godlike reason and wisdom. And then Zoroastro says, lead these two, Tamino and Pamina, into the temple. Cover their heads, they must be purified. And then the last thing we hear is a chorus number which again extols reason and virtue.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

Their text says, if virtue and justice strew the path of the great ones with glory, then the earth is a heavenly kingdom. And that is the end of the act.

[Pat Wright]

And mortals will resemble gods.

[Ben Manus]

There you go.

[Pat Wright]

Yes. Yes. So this is more of this moralizing and a big finish to Act One. And. And we can hardly wait to see what's going to happen in Act 2.

[Ben Manus]

SA.

[Pat Wright]

So we've concluded the first act and we are ready to launch into Act 2. It starts quite seriously.

[Ben Manus]

It does. It starts with sort of an overture in the score. It's called a march. And actually, musically, it's a very interesting little piece. It is only as I'm looking in my score now, 23, 4, 5, 6, 7, 28 bars long. But it is, if you're a music theory person, it is a full sonata form. Movement. Oh, it's the same form that could be, for instance, the first movement of a Mozart symphony or a Beethoven symphony would almost always be in sonata form. And those would generally be quite long movements. The first movement might be the longest movement of a piece. But here Mozart puts an entire movement in the most sort of concise possible way. 28 bars of brilliance.

[Pat Wright]

Wow. Well, if you want to listen to this carefully, I'm going to recommend. And I would recommend this in any event. Find yourself a streaming service or a CD or wherever you get your music and listen to an entire Magic Flute. You'll have fun with it and you'll enjoy it. Having all these comments from Ben to Remind you what you're listening to, because we're not going to have time to listen to that whole thing right now. That's my apology for that. But in this opening scene with this piece of music, we're going to have in a typical production of the Magic Flute, a speaking scene with the gravitas of that wonderful bass voice of Sarastro. When he's telling the assembled men in his group, monks, initiates, whatever you want to call them, he's going to say that this is such a key day in the history of their order. Tamino is the son of a king and he needs to be protected by the group and supported, but he also needs to pass trials. But before he sends to Mino off on trials, it's a little bit of enlightenment ideology sneaking in here, I think, because he needs the ascent of the assembled group. He is not simply a king making.

[Ben Manus]

A dictate, sort of a proto democracy.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, he needs the ascent. And they do ask, is he virtuous? And one fellow, even I believe it's the speaker raises the concern, but Tamino's a prince. Are we okay with that? And Sarastro in his big voice says, well, he's not just a prince, he is Einmensch, a human being. And that's the important piece of who he is. And yes, he is virtuous and he is discreet and he has all those things we care about. But of course he's going to have to go through these trials.

[Ben Manus]

We also hear here, although in many productions it is cut the three chords again that open the very beginning of the overture. They're slightly different because in the overture the three chords that we hear are all different chords. I mean, they're three chords, but they're different chords. Here we hear the same chord three times, but again, it symbolizes not only the masonry, but the dignified wisdom of this place.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, this is seen as the gathering of the great minds and the people who have also passed through all these tests, they have made it through. And this is something Both Mozart and Schickinader were masons, although I understand Schickenader was asked to leave his particular lodge. Oh, well, it's not easy being in theater.

[Ben Manus]

No, it's tough.

[Pat Wright]

But. But Tamino and Papageno. Papageno. There he. There he is again. He's like the sidekick and he's got to be there. He tries to wiggle out of it, but he doesn't ever fully wiggle out of it because they are like, don't you want to Find yourself a wife. This is what you have to do. You're not going to get a wife if you can't show yourself to be man enough.

[Ben Manus]

That's right, Papageno.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

So the next musical thing that we hear is this sort of very noble aria sung by Zoroastro. He has two arias here in the second act. Both of them are similar in their character. They're both pretty slow. They both have him sing very low notes, which we always like to hear from our basses.

[Pat Wright]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Manus]

And in this particular aria, he says, O Isis and Osiris. Isis and Osiris, Egyptian gods. Which is a whole nother thing that we can get into.

[Pat Wright]

Well, I mean, there's pyramid. That's part of the freemason, you know, what they embrace in terms of ideology.

[Ben Manus]

Is that right? I didn't know that those were the gods.

[Pat Wright]

It's probably more than I can go into right now. But like the masonry symbols that are. George Washington was a mason, for example.

[Ben Manus]

Sure, I knew that. And I did know about the pyramids, which, again, is related to the number three, but I didn't know that there was that sort of Egyptian connection.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, the pyramid. Right. They were okay for their members to be men of faith of a variety. You know, they didn't care which was your faith necessarily. And there's also symbols of the stonemasons because it comes from the. The medieval guilds. And even the. The rankings within Masonry are based on the medieval guilds.

[Ben Manus]

I'm learning so much.

[Pat Wright]

Wow.

[Ben Manus]

Okay. Right. So he says, O Isis and Haziras, bestow wisdom's spirit on the new pair. And he continues on. And it is the chorus of the priests who echo what he says. They just repeat his last line after him in two different stanzas. Just gorgeous writing from Mozart.

[Pat Wright]

And by the way, by speaking to Isis and Osiris, that's a male and female God coupled together. Just throw that in there.

[Ben Manus]

There you go.

[Pat Wright]

All right. Yeah. It's like a prayer.

[Ben Manus]

Absolutely. It absolutely has that kind of feeling to it.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. But we're not listening to that right now.

[Ben Manus]

We have to charge up other stuff to get to.

[Pat Wright]

So Papageno and Tamino are ready to go off to face the trials. They've been warned that it could end in their death. And the comfort that they've been given is, okay, well, if you die, it just means you meet God sooner, you get your heavenly reward sooner.

[Ben Manus]

So it's all good, as has been reward for many people for many years. Yeah. Anyways, so we have Tamino And Papageno. And we have a priest who gives them their first trial, which is silence, not to talk to women. Classic.

[Pat Wright]

So we're also thrown into the dark.

[Ben Manus]

They are indeed thrown into the dark. So they have darkness and silence. And we have these two priests. Sometimes they're called armored men, sometimes they're called priests, who basically sing this very short musical number, Be on your guard against women's wiles. This is the brotherhood's first duty, they say.

[Pat Wright]

Indeed, indeed.

[Ben Manus]

Which leads us directly into the appearance yet again of the three ladies.

[Pat Wright]

Three women who might be trying to lead them astray.

[Ben Manus]

They just. They just might. And we have the second quintet of the show. We had one in the first act where the women, they unlock Papageno's mouth and they bestow upon them the Magic Flute and the Magic Glockenspiel. And here they are again in Zoroastria's temple.

[Pat Wright]

How they get there is anyone's guess.

[Ben Manus]

We're suspending our disbelief. So much of the time, lots of disbelief is suspended. And they say, you're in this frightful place, you'll never escape again. Death is sworn to you, you're lost. And Tamino says, oh, oh, sorry, can't hear you, can't talk to you. But Papageno, yeah, gets to him, gets to him. He is the one who is always tempted. And throughout this number, Tamino is telling him, quiet, quiet, quiet. And the women, they start making up more and more lies. They say, the queen is very near you. She's secretly gotten to the temple. The members of the Brotherhood, the first thing they do is they go straight to hell and on and on. Papagino is terrified. And Tamino says, quiet, quiet, quiet.

[Pat Wright]

And in the end, he's got his hands over his ears and he's going, la, la, la, la, la. I can't hear you.

[Ben Manus]

That's pretty much it, yeah.

[Pat Wright]

I mean, even though he doesn't do it, it's much prettier than that.

[Ben Manus]

Well. And in the end, in fact, they do make it to the end, and the women run off. And they have survived the challenge. So let's listen to a little bit of.

[Pat Wright]

Needless to say, brave, handsome prince. Tamino is committed to his duty and he does not take the women's advice. He does not leave, as the three ladies try to tell him to do. And they finally depart. And whether he likes it or not, Papageno's still there too. Change of scene, we have the speaker, the priest, praising Tamino's behavior. It's sort of like on the other side of a mirror where they can see through. And as Tamino's behavior is being praised, we're about to see Pamina's situation highlighted again. She's more or less right back where she was. She is asleep under a rose bush, we're told. And Monostatos comes upon her and all of his lechery comes to the fore again. And as he sees her, he becomes more of a character in my eyes because he gets his own piece of music to sing where we understand a little bit more about who he is. We don't necessarily sympathize with him, we don't, but we understand him a little more. He says, okay, I'm wicked, but everyone needs love. Everyone wants someone. We know Pamina wants someone, Tamino wants someone, we know that Papageno wants someone. And he says, must I renounce love because I am wicked? But he moves from this thinking about love to getting pretty close to action, getting pretty close to her, saying, I must kiss her, I must kiss her. And as an audience member, you're starting to get nervous for her.

[Ben Manus]

One thing that I always found interesting about this little Monostatos aria is there's almost an aspect of it where it's not that you start to feel sorry for him, but in his wicked way, he sort of becomes slightly more humanized. He even says, for instance, was I not given a heart? Am I not made of flesh and blood? Yeah, to live without a wife would be like hellfire, he says.

[Pat Wright]

We're almost seeing a little bit of why he's become evil, because he feels the bitterness. Well, his name alone, in Greek, one who stands alone, Mano statos. Yeah, he's the one who is alone. And he will. Again, no spoilers. In opera, he will remain alone because he is not part of the Good Guy set. But we do get a little bit of insight into this person who is seemingly just put there to be a bad guy. Again, there's depth in all of this, right?

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, it's just another side of him. I mean, for such a minor character, it's a little sort of too little, too late for him, but it is there.

[Pat Wright]

But Pamina is saved, and she's saved by a very forceful character.

[Ben Manus]

She is saved by the entrance of her mother. How the Queen of the Night has gotten into the temple is another mystery.

[Pat Wright]

We don't need to know she's there.

[Ben Manus]

Doesn't really matter.

[Pat Wright]

Dream logic, Fairy tale logic.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, exactly. She's there and they have sort of a confrontation. It's a test for Pamina in which her mother tells her, basically, you need to kill Zoroastro or else I will renounce you as my daughter.

[Pat Wright]

Right. And all of this time, Pamina has said countless times how worried she is about her mother, how much grief her mother is undergoing because of her. She's worried more about her mother than herself. And the mother is threatening to cut her off if she doesn't murder this man.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah. And. Well, I mean, for Pamina, it's such a shock because in her head, as she's been captive, she, as you said, she's constantly talking about her mother. How sweet the name of her mother is to her.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

And in comes her mom and she sings this, one of the most famous arias in all of the literature. But literally the first line is, hell's Revenge boils in my heart, Death and despair blaze around me. She's not the sweet mom that Pamina was hoping for.

[Pat Wright]

No. And she's not the bereft woman that Tamino met in the first act.

[Ben Manus]

Right.

[Pat Wright]

You almost think you could see thunderbolts coming out of her fingertips. Yes, yes, right. Well, she's manipulated Tamino and now she's wanting to manipulate Pamina.

[Ben Manus]

Right, Exactly. But even though everyone has heard this, I think we better play a little bit just so everyone knows exactly what we're talking about here.

[Pat Wright]

Here we go.

[Ben Manus]

It sa.

[Pat Wright]

Almost feels like we should end the show after a piece like that. But there's more story yet.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, a lot more, actually.

[Pat Wright]

Wow. Wow. All right, well, she's got this dagger in her hand that her mother has given her and stormed off, Said to kill Zoroastra with. Yep. You know what to do, my daughter, if you want to remain my daughter. And Monastatos, we can't seem to shake this guy off. He comes in and he sees an opening because he knows what has just happened. And she doesn't. She doesn't want to use the dagger. She even says, must I murder? She feels like, what does she do? She loves her mother, she wants to obey. But.

[Ben Manus]

So Monostatos offers her a deal. Yeah, right. Some deal. He says there's only one way to save you and your mother, and that is to submit to me.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. And she won't do it. She refuses, absolutely refuses. And Monastos only sees one way out of that.

[Ben Manus]

Right. He says, well, if I can't have you, I'm going to go join your mother.

[Pat Wright]

And now Pamina sees Sarastro and says, sarastro, this all happened, but don't punish my mother. She still loves her Mother. And he says, I will have my own sort of revenge but then launches into a song about revenge has no.

[Ben Manus]

Place here, Right, his whole next aria, this is his one sort of true aria, is about in these sacred walls, vengeance is unknown, enemies are forgiven. It's a very sort of merciful response in fact, the first thing he says after Pamina says, have mercy on my mother his first line is I know everything, literally, I mean, he's a godlike figure, He's a godlike figure, he's sort of all knowing, all seeing whether you pass his trials or not, right?

[Pat Wright]

That's right well, after Sarastro's aria we get to check in again on Papageno and Tamino and they're reminded to keep silent and in their silence an old woman appears on the stage and I just love how she always says, yeah, mein angle when she's talking to Papageno, yes, my angel. And he's like, oh, okay, well, I'm bored, I'll talk to you. And he asks her how old she is she's 18 years old, she says, and he laughs. Do you have a sweetheart? Oh yes, I do well, what's his name? Papageno. And he's, he doesn't know what to make of this, this is just too weird. And she's about to say what her name is, we all know what her name is, it's Papagena. But she doesn't get to say There's a thunderclap and she runs away because she's not yet supposed to reveal that and the three boys show up again and they do what they do, they encourage the men on their quest There's.

[Ben Manus]

A lot of people showing up, Just the plot gets very convoluted at this.

[Pat Wright]

Point in the story It's a fairy tale world, It's a fairy tale world, they show up when they need to and they've got something they need to do but they bring some food and.

[Ben Manus]

Some drink and they bring, very importantly, the flute and the glockenspiel yes, they do back to Tamino and Papa gain know and they say if we see each other again, joy will be the reward for your courage so basically they're saying, we're going to see you if you do well and you're going to win and if not, well, that's going to be tough yeah, they even say to Papageno, again, everyone's ever this constant in this opera, everyone's just telling him, shut up. They even say it again, be quiet. I mean, how many times has someone Told Papageno to stop talking.

[Pat Wright]

It's not just randomly. He's supposed to be honoring a vow of silence in these trials and he just can't.

[Ben Manus]

He is.

[Pat Wright]

He talks a lot. I mean, that's part of the comedy.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, of course, like to his future, Papagena. But then after the boys leave, we are once again back in the land of very serious opera, because now we have this scene between Pamina and Tamino in which Pamina is trying to talk to him.

[Pat Wright]

They're finally back together in the same spot.

[Ben Manus]

They're finally back together.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

And Tamino, of course, cannot talk to her because she's a woman. And this is the trial that he is forced to undergo. And so he remains silent. And Pamina at this point is just despairing. Think of what she's just gone through. Her mother showed up, her mom ordered her to kill this guy.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

Then suddenly she finds the guy she's in love with and thinks that she can at least be comforted by him. But all of a sudden he won't even speak to her.

[Pat Wright]

No.

[Ben Manus]

So she has no choice but to sing an aria, of course, which is one of the most extraordinary arias in all of Mozart operas. It's her aria of despair. And the text at the beginning is, I feel it, it has vanished. Love's happiness has vanished forever. These hours of bliss will never return to my heart. And she even says, see, Tamina, these tears flow for you alone. And he remains silent. So let's listen to a little bit of this sa.

[Pat Wright]

That was poor Pamina in Mozart's Magic Flute. Her beloved will not speak to her because he's taken a vow of silence. But she's feeling completely rejected. And even her good buddy Papageno, who's on stage still does not explain what's going on. Not because he's as careful about his vow of silence, but all the food that's been delivered.

[Ben Manus]

He has different priorities.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. And he even proudly says once Pamina leaves. So sadly he even says, see, Tamino, I know how to stay quiet. What a time for you to honor your vows there, buddy. Poor girl. But we soon have another scene with the priests and Sarastro and he brings Pamina in. Two men are still under their vow of silence.

[Ben Manus]

Yep. He brings her in and tells them, you have more trials you must live up to. The first is to come here and say your last farewell.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

It doesn't get easier for these guys.

[Pat Wright]

It doesn't. I mean, they do get a little bit of. Yep. You pass two trials that's cool. But he has to say a final farewell and Pamina hears that these instructions are being given, so that's just hitting her hard. And she will worry that she's never going to see him again. She's sure he's going to die in these trials. So even if he does still speak to her and love her, it's all. She's not feeling good about the future.

[Ben Manus]

No, she's not. And they sing a trio here with Pamina, Tamino and Sarastro, which is again just heartbreaking for Pamina. And there are a couple moments in here I don't think we're going to hear it, but there are a couple moments in here where she's sort of just begging him really to stay, but not only can he not speak to her, he has to leave and he does.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah. And it's interesting, it's not the same motivation that, that Papageno has, because Tamino has bought into the ideals of this brotherhood that Sarastro leads.

[Ben Manus]

Yes. Well, he himself, as you just said, he holds himself to these ideals where Papageno requires other people to hold him.

[Pat Wright]

To them and say, you want a wife, don't you?

[Ben Manus]

Right. Keep the carrot dangling in front of him, so to speak.

[Pat Wright]

Exactly, exactly. But Tamino is, you know, straightened his spine. Yes, I am a prince. Yes, I believe in goodness. You're seeing him grow again, a coming of age story. You're seeing him grow during all of this. Then we spend some time with Papageno in a dialogue section where the speaker says, you know, Papageno, you really deserve punishment. You kept breaking the rules, you spoke all the time, you were supposed to be quiet. But good news for you, the gods are merciful. Do you need anything? Well, I want some wine. I'm really thirsty. Wine would be great right now. So he's really happy. Do you need anything else? I think I'm good. Oh, oh, wait, wait. A wife, that's the thing. I want, I want a wife.

[Ben Manus]

It's the second thing he thinks of after his wine.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, after he has a few sips anyway, you know. Yeah. And he does sing, then he sings.

[Ben Manus]

A song about it.

[Pat Wright]

This is the one that you referred to earlier that's similar to the first song where he's introducing himself.

[Ben Manus]

Right. So it is very similar. And in fact this actually uses not exactly a glockenspiel in the same kind of glockenspiel that he plays, that is his, his magic instrument. This has a keyboard glockenspiel which is similar to a celeste It's a. Basically a piano, but instead of each hammer in the piano strikes a string, in this instrument, each hammer hits a bell, so it's played by a keyboard player, but it sounds like little bells. And that is what you will hear in the orchestra in this number, as he sings his usual several verses all the same, about how he wants a wife.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, yes. He wants a sweetheart or a wife. I mean, he's a simple man and he knows that about himself, he knows what he wants. Meanwhile, Pamina is suffering and she is contemplating the worst. She blames the curse that her mother has laid on her and she's thinking she must end it all. But the three boys show up.

[Ben Manus]

Yep. So this is the beginning of the Act 2 finale. We had the Act 1 finale. This is the Act 2 finale which takes us all the way to the end. And it's the first of these two suicide scenes that I mentioned earlier. Pamina is deathly serious about this and she takes the dagger and she is about to kill herself. But in a very similar musical moment to the beginning, where the three ladies come in and slay the dragon and save Tamino, the three boys come in and sort of stop her arm and save Pamino.

[Pat Wright]

Explain the musical similarities.

[Ben Manus]

Well, in both cases we reach really a climax of sort of despair. And then the trio, whether it's the women in the beginning or the boys in the end, interrupt right away and stop them. In the very beginning, when we have the women, we have this big fermat, we call it a fermata, which is a held note, is what that means. It means stop, fermata. You stop, you have a held note. And then we continue on with the three women. Here the boys lead into their own section where they try to cheer Pamina up. They say, if your man would see this, he would die of sorrow, for he loves only you. And they come in and they tell her that he has not been silent because he hates you and doesn't want to talk to you. He has been silent because he loves you so much that he needs to pass these trials in order to be with him.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, so they've basically solved her problem. I mean, not the problem that Tamino might die during the trials, but she is loved, right?

[Ben Manus]

And then she says, lead him to me. And they do. They run off with her.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, with a little more moralizing. Two hearts that are burning with such true love Humans can never separate their enemies Strive in vain for the gods protect them we are told, we are told true love endures. The next piece of music is. Is interesting. And I understand it's often cut from productions because they do tend to run long. But it's very interesting because you have these two armored men who are basically speaking an inscription. It's from a Psalm, actually, Psalm 11. And some of the words are the way that Luther. He set this Psalm 11. And then Bach actually takes Luther's words and puts it into a cantata. But the. The key part, from the story point of view here is that he who travels these laborious paths will be purified by fire, water, air and earth. And those are those elements also the elements I mentioned in regards to the flute itself, that magical flute. But it's reminding us what these trials are all about, right?

[Ben Manus]

They lay out the future trials for Tamino. And he responds by saying, death doesn't scare me. Unlock terror's gates. I will gladly dare the bold course. And just as he says that, Pamina comes in, or rather we hear her voice, and she says, tamino, stop. I have to see you. And so he is amazed, and he has this moment with the two armored men where they're sort of rejoicing, and he asks, am I allowed to talk to her? Yeah, because he wants to. It's been long enough now.

[Pat Wright]

And they say, yes, much to everyone's surprise, or at least to mine, and.

[Ben Manus]

Much to everyone's relief.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

They say a woman who does not shrink from night and death is worthy and will be initiated. They say of her.

[Pat Wright]

And this is amazing when you think about it. A woman will be initiated.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah. And she has proven herself. And so then we have this unbelievable moment where they see each other. And I think we'll listen to it. And then I will talk a little bit about it.

[Pat Wright]

Okay? Sa.

[Ben Manus]

So this is this absolutely stunning moment here. And as you just heard, and one of the things that I love about it is the way Mozart uses silence. If you notice those silences, first Pamina says, tamino, mine silence. What happiness. Silence. Then Tamino says, pamina, mine silence. What joy. And it's almost the silence conveys this sort of dumbfounded feelings that they're having. Oh, my God, it's him. It's her. And he says to her, here are the gates of terror which threaten me with danger and death. These obstacles of fire and water that we're about to walk through. And she says, I will be at your side in all places. I myself will lead you. Let love be my guide. So this coming together finally. And then she starts talking about the flute.

[Pat Wright]

She gives the backstory on the flute.

[Ben Manus]

The Other hand mentions that, oh, by the way, my dad made it, which we have heard nothing about her father this entire opera.

[Pat Wright]

No, we haven't. But there's an assumption, I think, that we understand the old fairy tale nature of this matriarchal world. And there's a tradition in a lot of these fairy tales where there is this queen matriarch that the husbands are more or less disposable or might have a term of office that ends and then there's another husband, father of whatever children potentially. Or you could also think of it as studies of civilization and civilized religions have the earliest religions being. And earliest civilizations for that matter, being matrilineal and the earliest religions being matriarchal. And then over time, as people become settled and civilization itself develops, including writing crops and things that civilization entails, over time, things become more patriarchal, more patrilineal. And it's always the women are always seen as a threat to the men because they have to control the women. Because if you're going to have a patrilineal society, you have to control the women to know that the offspring are truly the offspring, as opposed to a matrilineal society where that's not a concern.

[Ben Manus]

Wow, that's so interesting. I mean, that makes perfect sense. I was always just so surprised. What? Her dad, he made this flute. We're just hearing about this now? The opera's gonna be over in 10 minutes.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah, no, it's interesting. I think it's dropped there as a. As an acknowledgement of what a lot of the audience would already more or less have guessed.

[Ben Manus]

I see. Interesting.

[Pat Wright]

I think.

[Ben Manus]

Cool. Well, it's certainly a better explanation than what I've come up with, which is none. So anyways, so they go into the trials of water and fire. They play the flute, this gorgeous, very sort of noble march as they walk through these trials. And then after they successfully pass the trials, another little rousing chorus.

[Pat Wright]

Yep.

[Ben Manus]

But now we come to one of my favorite scenes. I know it's one of your favorite scenes.

[Pat Wright]

Oh, I've been waiting for this.

[Ben Manus]

It starts not so nice. It starts with Papageno alone. He's very sad. This is the counterpart to Pamina's suicide scene. He is contemplating his own suicide because he's lonely and he can't find a wife. And so he finally says, okay, I'm gonna take my pipe, my little flute, I'm gonna blow it three times, and if no one appears, if I can't summon a wife, I'm gonna hang myself. And it's one of those scenes that is both really sad and really touching but also kind of comic.

[Pat Wright]

It's played through last time.

[Ben Manus]

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's not sort of deathly serious the way Pamina's is.

[Pat Wright]

Right.

[Ben Manus]

Anyways, he plays his flute three times, no one shows up. And just as he's about to hang himself in come the three boys, right on cue. Right on cue. Just like they were right on cue 10 minutes earlier for Pamina's scene. And they stop. They say, stop, be smart. One only lives once, that should be enough for you. And then they remind him, because you know Papageno, he has lots of qualities but he's not the most book smart or, you know, he doesn't necessarily remember all the things.

[Pat Wright]

He can't hold too many things in his head at once.

[Ben Manus]

No, it's not that big up there. So they say, hey, by the way, you still have that glockenspiel that we brought you?

[Pat Wright]

Give it a try, give it a shot.

[Ben Manus]

And he says, oh hey, wow, that's a great idea, why not? And he does. And then what happens after that?

[Pat Wright]

Well, then we see the old woman come back in.

[Ben Manus]

We do and lo and behold she is transformed.

[Pat Wright]

That 18 year old old woman. Yes. Whose sweetheart is named Papageno. And she finally gets to tell us her name.

[Ben Manus]

Yes. And they, boy do they say their names a lot. This is just a, it's sort of a tongue twister. They say Papageno, Papageno, Papageno, Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa. On and on and on and on and on.

[Pat Wright]

It even gets cuter because they, then they start, start talking about their life together and how they have a little. He says they'll have a little Papageno. And she says and then a little Papagena and a little Papageno. And I saw this one production which was adorable where they just kept holding up tiny baby clothes as they said this. So cute. They are just happy little birds. Sa.

[Ben Manus]

Okay, so we are almost at the end here. Tamino and Pamina have overcome all their trials. They're together. Papageno has found his Papagena. But we have one last little thing to do.

[Pat Wright]

Yes.

[Ben Manus]

With the Queen of the night and the three ladies now being led by Monostatos who has followed up on his word to go out and find them. And he is leading them back into the temple where they will have vengeance on everybody.

[Pat Wright]

They have a plan.

[Ben Manus]

They're evil. They've got an evil plan. Yes, but it doesn't last long. It lasts. Oh, I don't know, 45 seconds or something.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

Before there is thunder and lightning and a storm and they are driven out and plunged into eternal night.

[Pat Wright]

Yes. And that is possible because with the success of Tamino and Pamina, they are set up to succeed Sarastro as the leader of this, of this group of righteous initiates. And in the fairy tale world and fairy tale logic, they have brought order and balance back to a world that was out of balance before that.

[Ben Manus]

Right. And boom, they are gone. And so then we're really at the end. Zoroaster has one line. He says, the rays of the sun drive out the night and annihilate the illicit power of the hypocrite. Which is an interesting choice of personality.

[Pat Wright]

Boy, that's enlightenment speak if I ever heard it.

[Ben Manus]

And then we have a beautiful rousing chorus to end us, just like we did with act one. And that is the Magic Flute.

[Pat Wright]

Yes, yes. And we will let you listen to a little bit of that. But first I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, Ben Manis. Keep an eye out for him, he's around.

[Ben Manus]

It's been amazing to be here with you, Pat. And I want to tell everybody listening, come to the Grand Teton Music Festival. The last week of the festival is an opera.

[Pat Wright]

Yeah.

[Ben Manus]

And we do it all in one week.

[Pat Wright]

Unbelievable plan for next summer or the summer after to come see the Grand Teton Music Festival. It's magnificent.

[Ben Manus]

Absolutely.

[Pat Wright]

Thank you, Ben. And thank you, Mozart.

[Ben Manus]

Most importantly, thank you, Mozart Sa.

[Pat Wright]

Thanks for listening to this episode of Opera for Everyone. Opera for Everyone airs every Sunday morning from 9 to 11 Mountain Time on 8091 Khol Jackson, Wyoming. Opera can be challenging, but everyone loves a good story. And a story set to music is even better. Our mission is to make opera understandable, accessible and enjoyable because we believe opera is for everyone.