60 Fun Facts About The Magic Flute

Tamino, the hero sent to rescue Pamina, is what by birth?

A prince, the handsome kind fairy tales require, yet his rescue story turns into a string of ordeals he must pass on the way to enlightenment.

What reward does the Queen of the Night promise Tamino if his rescue mission succeeds?

The captive as his bride. It is an easy promise for the Queen to make, since her real aim, which comes out in Act 2, is to see Sarastro dead.

Why can Tamino not contradict Papageno's boast of having killed the monster?

He had fainted. The hero collapses in the first minutes of the opera and wakes beside the dead beast, so the first passer-by is free to claim the kill.

The Magic Flute is a Singspiel. What does that form combine?

It was a popular German form, unlike Mozart's Italian operas with sung recitative.

What kind of theatre staged The Magic Flute's 1791 premiere?

Suburban. An old friend of Mozart ran a company there that played operas in German, and Mozart composed this one for that troupe.

In which city did The Magic Flute have its premiere?

Vienna. Mozart left an archbishop's service there after a stormy meeting in June 1781 and stayed on to earn his own living.

What relation is the Queen of the Night to Pamina?

Her mother. The Queen tells Tamino her daughter has been carried off and sends him off to bring her back.

The Queen's Three Ladies paint Sarastro as an evil demon; what does he turn out to be?

A benevolent priest: an old man at the temple door tells Tamino the truth, and the rescuer ends up siding with the man he was sent to fight.

What is Papageno's occupation?

Bird-catcher. He traps birds for the Queen of the Night, and her ladies pay him for each day's catch in wine, sweet bread and figs.

In what disguise does Papagena first appear to Papageno?

As an old woman who insists she is 18 years and 2 minutes old; only when Papageno grudgingly promises to marry her does she turn into a pretty young girl.

What creature is chasing Tamino when the opera opens?

A serpent. The Queen's three attendants kill it, and Papageno, wandering in afterwards, claims to have strangled it with his bare hands.

How do the Three Ladies punish Papageno for lying about killing the monster?

They padlock his mouth, so the chatterbox can only hum his way through the next number until the ladies relent and take the lock off.

What do the ladies give Papageno for protection alongside Tamino's flute?

Magic bells. When he is recaptured later and plays them, his captors drop everything and dance helplessly away.

Tamino falls in love with Pamina after seeing what?

Her portrait. The Queen's ladies hand it over, and within minutes he has sworn to rescue a woman he has never met.

Who is Monostatos?

Chief of Sarastro's slaves, and Pamina's jailer; when he and Papageno first come face to face, each takes the other for the devil and both bolt.

What do Tamino and Pamina do the moment they first meet face to face?

Fall into each other's arms, to the indignation of Sarastro's watching followers; until that moment the two lovers have never exchanged a word.

Tamino is turned away from the temples of Reason and Nature; the third temple is dedicated to what?

Wisdom. Voices order Tamino back from the other two doors, but here an old priest comes out to talk, and what he says shakes Tamino's trust in the Queen.

Which two Egyptian gods does Sarastro invoke at the start of Act 2?

Isis and Osiris. Sarastro has just told his council that Tamino will face the ordeals, and he prays that the divine couple will protect him and Pamina.

What vow must Tamino keep during his first trial, causing Pamina to think he no longer loves her?

Silence. Pamina takes his refusal to speak as rejection, and her despair carries her to the brink of suicide before the three boys step in.

What does the Queen of the Night hand Pamina in Act 2, ordering her to kill Sarastro?

A dagger. She swears to cast Pamina off for ever unless Sarastro dies by the girl's hand, a threat she delivers in the opera's most famous aria.

What is the Queen of the Night's Act 2 rage aria called?

Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen, 'Hell's vengeance boils in my heart': the Queen sings it while ordering Pamina to commit murder, in a part famed as perhaps the hardest ever composed.

Whose 1940s recording of the Queen of the Night's aria became famous for being so badly sung?

Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York socialite in her seventies, paid for the record herself and went on to sell out Carnegie Hall; Meryl Streep played her in 2016.

A recording of the Queen of the Night's rage aria left Earth in 1977 aboard which spacecraft?

The Voyager probes each carry a golden record, a message for any alien life that might one day find them, and Edda Moser's Queen of the Night is on it.

Which voice type sings the Queen of the Night?

Coloratura soprano, the agile high voice built for rapid runs and leaps; Mozart wrote the part for Josepha Hofer, a singer known for her command of very high notes.

Josepha Hofer, the first Queen of the Night, was related to Mozart how?

She was his sister-in-law: Mozart first fell in love with her sister Aloysia Weber, got a cool reception, and later married a third sister, Constanze.

Sarastro's Act 2 aria declaring that revenge has no place in his domain is called what?

In diesen heil'gen Hallen, 'Within these hallowed halls': Pamina begs him to spare the Queen who wants him dead, and Sarastro answers that his order has no place for revenge.

Which two elements do Tamino and Pamina pass through in the final trial?

Fire and water. Pamina insists on facing the ordeal at his side, and the flute's music carries the two of them through both unharmed.

What does Papageno resolve to do when he thinks he has lost Papagena for good?

Hang himself. Three boys talk him out of it, which is why researchers call the protective effect of stories about people who get through a crisis the Papageno effect.

The opera's comic couple begin their reunion duet by stammering which syllable over and over?

Pa-Pa-Pa- is each stammering the other's name in sheer astonishment, before the pair start planning a nest full of little Papagenos and Papagenas.

What fate meets the plotters who storm Sarastro's temple in the final scene?

They are cast into eternal night: thunder and lightning scatter the Queen's raiding party at the temple's edge, and the scene dissolves into a stage flooded with sunlight.

Beyond food and drink, what is the one thing Papageno longs for?

A wife. Pressed to aim higher, he says sleep, food and drink will do, plus a pretty mate if one turns up, and is told the trials are the only way to get her.

Like The Magic Flute, which earlier Mozart work is a German Singspiel rather than an Italian opera?

Abduction from the Seraglio, from 1782, is the other famous one: Emperor Joseph II wanted German-language opera at his court theatre, and Mozart supplied it.

Mozart broke off work on The Magic Flute in summer 1791 to write and premiere what?

A coronation opera, La clemenza di Tito, written at speed for the crowning of Emperor Leopold II; it opened on 6 September, just 24 days before The Magic Flute.

Which fraternal organisation's symbolism is widely seen in The Magic Flute?

Freemasonry. Mozart and Schikaneder were both lodge members, and the fondness for threes, from three ladies and three boys to three opening chords, echoes a number sacred to Masons.

In which city did the Mozart family befriend Schikaneder when his touring troupe visited in 1780?

Salzburg, the Mozarts' home town, hosted his troupe for a long stay that autumn, and the friendship struck up there led eleven years later to The Magic Flute.

On The Magic Flute's first night in 1791, what was Mozart's own part in the performance?

He conducted the orchestra, which the playbill promised he would do out of respect for the public and out of friendship for the author of the piece.

After killing the monster that chased Tamino, what do the Three Ladies quarrel over?

Who gets to stay with him: each wants the handsome stranger to herself, none will yield, and in the end all three have to leave together.

What animals pull Sarastro's chariot when he first rides on stage?

Lions, six of them in the original stage directions, draw his triumphal car; hearing him approach, the runaway Pamina resolves to tell him the truth.

Benedikt Schack, Mozart's close friend and the first Tamino, was what type of singer?

Tenor. Mozart gave his young hero the high romantic voice and sent the depths to Sarastro, a bass, so the two men sound worlds apart.

How did The Magic Flute fare in 1791?

A quick hit. Mozart's letters that October report a crowded house, applause and encores, and he kept going back, taking friends and family along.

As the trials begin, two priests warn Tamino and Papageno to beware of what?

The wiles of women, they sing, and right on cue the Queen's three ladies slip in to tempt the pair into failing their first test.

Which composer loved The Magic Flute by Mozart's own account?

Antonio Salieri's warm reception of the opera is recorded in one of Mozart's own letters, and historians find no foundation for the poisoning legend that Amadeus made famous.

Which opera house trimmed Julie Taymor's Magic Flute staging into a shorter English version in 2006?

New York's Met then sent a performance live to about 100 cinemas across North America, Britain, Japan and Norway, the first of its Live in HD broadcasts.

Which picture-book artist designed a Magic Flute production for Houston's opera company?

Maurice Sendak designed the Houston staging, and he helped turn his own Where the Wild Things Are into an opera as well.

Which Swedish director made a celebrated 1975 film of The Magic Flute for television?

Ingmar Bergman fell for the opera at twelve and failed to get it onto his puppet-theatre stage; decades later his film went out on Swedish television on New Year's Day 1975.

Bergman's film was inspired by, and evokes, which 18th-century court theatre near Stockholm?

He had wandered in through an unlocked stage door as a boy and never forgot the restored baroque stage.

Kenneth Branagh's 2006 film of The Magic Flute relocated the story to which setting?

World War I. The Queen of the Night makes her entrance riding on top of a tank, and Stephen Fry wrote the English text.

The celebrated 1975 film of The Magic Flute makes Sarastro what relation to Pamina, unlike the libretto?

He is her father. In the libretto Pamina's father is dead, having handed his power to Sarastro in his last hour.

Schikaneder went on to build which famous theatre, opened in 1801, where Beethoven later lived and Fidelio premiered?

Theater an der Wien, built especially for him. He lodged Beethoven in the building hoping for an opera on his own libretto, but the collaboration came to nothing.

How did Schikaneder's life end in 1812?

Impoverished and insane. His lavish productions cost more than they earned, he had to give up the grand theatre built for him, and the fortune from his hits melted away.

The servant who hauls the captured Tamino before Sarastro asks for a reward; what does Sarastro order instead?

A sound beating, which Sarastro drily presents as the man's reward: it is his answer to the servant's pestering of Pamina while she was in his charge.

The Magic Flute is K 620; which Mozart work is K 626?

The Requiem. Mozart died with it incomplete, and because a fee was still due his widow had Süssmayr produce a finished version.

Who took the comic role of Papageno on The Magic Flute's first night in 1791?

The writer of its words, Emanuel Schikaneder, also ran the theatre: he staged his friend Mozart's opera with his own troupe and kept the comic lead for himself.

Caught lying, Papageno receives what from the Three Ladies in place of his usual wine and sweet bread?

Water and a stone: one lady swaps his wine for plain water and another his sweet bread for a rock, all for claiming a kill that was theirs.

A servant of the temple overhears the Queen of the Night's plot against Sarastro; how does he try to use it?

To blackmail Pamina: love me or I tell, he threatens, until Sarastro walks in and drives him off, after which the spurned servant goes over to the Queen's side.

Until Lemberg's run surfaced, which city was credited with the opera's first staging away from home?

Prague staged it on 25 October 1792 and was long called the first city after the premiere run, until a Pressburg newspaper report showed Lemberg, now Lviv, had played it on 21 September.

Weeks after Mozart died, his widow offered a manuscript score to the court in which city, young Beethoven's home?

Bonn's electoral court, where a 21-year-old Beethoven played viola in the orchestra, was offered the score in Constanze's letter of 28 December 1791, and the first full score was printed in the city in 1814.

Who conducted the first studio recording of the opera, completed in 1938?

He led the Berlin Philharmonic; the first known recording of any part of the work was a 1903 overture by the Victor Talking Machine Company.

Which Wagner opera, about a naive youth tested before he can lead a sacred brotherhood, is often likened to The Magic Flute?

Parsifal follows a 'pure fool' who must resist temptation before he can lead the knights of the Grail, much as Tamino has to pass his ordeals before the priests accept him.

When Tamino first plays his magic flute in Act 1, who or what gathers round to listen?

Wild animals of every kind come out to hear him and flee the moment he stops, leaving Tamino to lament that his flute charms beasts yet has not brought Pamina to him.