Page 167 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

August 16 & 17
PROGRAM NOTES

all theatrical masterpieces, it has Everyman is written in a clean of benevolence, compassion and
something for everybody. There’s folk-song style and Prince Tamino enlightened humanity.
a noble prince, a faithful princess, is supplied with noble lyric arias
a comic bird-catching sidekick, out of the best heroic traditions.
a flinty Queen of the Night, an Duets, trios, choral and ensemble
odious villain, a magnanimous pieces savor of opera buffa and
high priest. The prince wields a popular theater. Furthermore, © 2024 Scott Fogelsong
magic flute that can change Mozart made the orchestra a
sorrow into joy, the bird-catcher central voice in the drama, using
has a set of magic bells for instruments such as the trombone,
protection, and three angelic little basset horn and glockenspiel that
boys guide them through their were rarely encountered in theater
quest to rescue the fair princess orchestras.
from the clutches of a powerful
demonic wizard. Superficially The Magic Flute is a
singspiel, meaning musical theater
Said wizard turns out to be a in the vernacular with spoken
benevolent elder—this is where dialog, but while singspiel was
the Masons come into full play— typically lowbrow stuff meant to
and the plot morphs from fantasy make a quick profit then vanish,
adventure into barely-concealed Flute soon surmounted its origins
Masonic ritual. There’s not much and wound up in a category of
point in trying to make sense its own, rather like A Midsummer
of the various plot twists and Night’s Dream or MGM’s 1939 The
developments, since The Magic Wizard of Oz. Perhaps our love
Flute takes place in a fairy-tale for this singular creation is tinged
land where two plus two don’t with regret, knowing as we do
necessarily make four. And, of that Mozart would be taken away
course, it all ends happily. The from us within a few months. We
prince gets his princess, the will never know what he might
bird-catcher gets his mate, the have done about the vibrant new
evil Queen and her henchman musical theater that The Magic
get their proper comeuppance. Flute so radiantly promises. It is
Light banishes darkness and said that he was contemplating an
good triumphs over evil. operatic version of The Tempest—

Mozart’s music binds it all and what a perfect marriage of
together in a web of enchantment. composer and material that might
However frantically overworked have been! But there’s no point in
as he might have been, Mozart crying (well, not too much) over
fashioned a score that is quite what can’t be. We have The Magic
simply a thing of wonder. It is Flute, after all, and that’s enough.
most definitely not of a piece but It never goes stale, never seems
is instead a glorious gallimaufry. tired or trite or overplayed. Every
Drawing freely from the idioms of day, somewhere in the world,
18 -century opera, Mozart chose Prince Tamino and Papageno
th
his aria types according to the are setting forth on their quest
needs of his characters. Thus the to rescue the lovely Pamina, the
Queen of the Night gets a pair Queen of the Night is raging
of virtuoso opera seria display in glittering fury and the noble
arias, Papageno the bird-catcher Sarastro is proclaiming his message

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