Review: The Magic Flute of Leipzig – A great introduction to the world of comic opera

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute is considered the most frequently performed German opera (libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder) – it was also performed in Leipzig two years after its Vienna premiere in 1791 and has been performed repeatedly in countless productions. For many people, Mozart’s work served as an introduction to the world of opera.

But how do you classify “The Magic Flute”? Like a magical fairy tale? Like an old Viennese folk theater with Caspar characters, like the bird merchant Papageno? Or as a ritual test for the spirit of enlightenment? Which side should you take? To the Queen of the Night who vows revenge, or to Sarastro, who kidnapped her daughter Pamina and resides in the “Temple of Wisdom and Reason” and has gathered a priesthood around him?

At the start of the 2023/24 season there have already been several attempts at updating: a new libretto by Ivana Sokola, for example, set to music by Mozart rather than the original libretto and which uses the example of “The Magic Flute” to illustrate how the older generation confronts climate change, The world is handed over to the younger generation who must endure tests of water and fire (at the Hof Theater).

Then “The Magic Flute” as a dystopia set in the future at the Brandenburg Theater in collaboration with the Dutch group “opera2days”: here Sarastro establishes a populist norm in which memories and emotions are eliminated. Above all, these new productions attempt to avoid many of the misogynistic and demeaning sentences of the original (“Women do little, talk much,” “Beware of women’s tricks”) and, on the contrary, to promote women’s courage. in the foreground.

Leipzig’s production of Matthias Davids doesn’t go that far. Davids is a music specialist, and head of the highly successful musical department of the Theater Linz, which will also stage Richard Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg” in Bayreuth in 2025. In his Leipzig production, he allows the characters to chat in the language of contemporary everyday life, toning down the unpleasant parts. For women, but leaves the characters’ attitudes and actions as they are. His “The Magic Flute” is, above all, an imaginative and well-crafted comedy.

Sarastro’s priests are a club of men with ordinary – sometimes stupid – views, while the Queen of the Night is a very fun-loving and down-to-earth woman: she sways and snaps her fingers when she sings her colors. Tamino and Papageno in particular – dressed in military fatigues and equipped with a toolbox like a birdcage – know how to act like cool people.