The Magic Flute: From Viennese Singspiel to Symbolism

Introduction

An opera in which relatively simple musical numbers are interspersed with spoken dialogue in German. Although the term was in use before the 1700s to denote a dramatic piece with music, it acquired its most commonly accepted meaning at the beginning of the 18th century, with the musical plays given in the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna. The rich tradition of mid-18th-century Singspiel in northern and central Germany followed on from this Viennese beginning, after the disappearance of Baroque opera from the German stage.(Boldney, 123)

Viennese Singspiel

From about the 1750s the influence of opéra comique and English ballad opera was felt in the works of J. C. Standfuss, performed in Leipzig, Hamburg, and Lübeck. The many works by J. A. Hiller (mostly on texts by C. F. Weisse) produced in Leipzig in the 1760s and 70s juxtapose musical idioms borrowed from Italian and French opera with a folk-like German quality, while Benda , at about the same time, demonstrated a move towards more serious plots (Romeo und Julie, 1776) as well as an expansion towards longer sections of music. (Boldney, 123)

By the 1770s the term was also commonly used to denote any comic opera translated into German, and when Mozart's opere buffe were given in Germany they were referred to as Singspiele. The predominance in Vienna of Italian and French opera prompted an initiative by Emperor Joseph II to establish a German National Singspiel company in the city.

The Viennese composer Ignaz Umlauf was commissioned to compose the piece that marked the inauguration of the venture, Die Bergknappen ('The Miners'), given at the Burgtheater in 1778. Umlauf was appointed Kapellmeister to the company and composed four more works for it. Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) was by far the most popular to result from this initiative. The company ceased operating in 1783, but was revived between 1785 and 1788, when Dittersdorf began his successful career as a composer of Singspiele with Doktor und Apotheker (1786). Dittersdorf established the form as it survived into the following century, with its characteristic mixture of songs and more complex ensembles. The greatest Viennese Singspiel, Mozart and Schikaneder's Die Zauberflöte (1791), was of such complexity, with long act-finales of continuous music, that the authors designated it 'eine grosse Oper'. (Boldney, 123)

While such writers as Goethe hoped to raise the level of Singspiel texts but at the same time preserve musical immediacy, composers increasingly avoided using a term inherently associated with music less demanding than that of opera. Beethoven's Fidelio (final version, Vienna, 1814) occupied a unique position and, with its essentially heroic, serious plot, should more properly be regarded as an early German Romantic work. In the 1860s the arrival of Viennese operetta, in emulation of Offenbach's French operettas, with the works of Johann Strauss (ii) and others marked the end of the Singspiel.

Schikaneder's libretto and the Magic Flute

The opera was the culmination of a period of increasing involvement by Mozart with Schikaneder's theatrical troupe, which since 1789 had been ...