Religious Education Commons^™

Mormons, Opera, And Mozart, Gideon O. Burton

BYU Studies Quarterly

One of the world's great operatic works, The Magic Flute is the subject of this issue of BYU Studies, which presents a variety of perspectives from scholars and performers who have enjoyed and explored Mozart's masterpiece both critically and personally. It may seem unusual for BYU Studies to devote so much attention to a single operatic work, but opera is itself an inclusive art from, inviting the very sort of interdisciplinary study to which this periodical is com(1.15)mitted.

A Magic Summer With The Magic Flute, Kaye Terry Hanson

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

A Performer's Reflections On Die Zauberflöte, Lawrence P. Vincent

BYU Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Toward An Anthropology Of Apotheosis In Mozart's Magic Flute: A Demonstration Of The Artistic Universality And Vitality Of Certain "Peculiar" Latter-Day Saint Doctrines, Alan F. Keele

BYU Studies Quarterly

It seems there are certain notions held by Latter-day Saints, deviating almost diametrically from those promulgated by orthodox Christianity, that have the power to evoke form certain conservative Christian quarters the most vituperative fulminations. One thinks immediately of the idea expounded by Joseph Smith at King Follett's funeral that humans have the potential to become gods through a process of perfection experienced by the gods themselves. The orthodox response to this notion in the form of the Godmakers films and other manifestations of righteous indignation has been extraordinary. The paradox, however, is this: Scratch the orthodox surface of Christianity, explore …

Notes On The Egyptian Motifs In Mozart's Magic Flute, John Laurence Gee

BYU Studies Quarterly

Operas are noted for their music rather than their librettos. They are attributed to their composers rather than their librettists. Thus the perennial popularity of Mozart's Magic Flute is attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music rather than Emanuel Schikaneder's libretto. Schikaneder's plot revolves around the conversion and initiation of Tamino, Pamina, and Papageno into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, seen largely from Tamino's point of view. (This can provide some confusion for those who encounter the opera for the first time as Tamino learns in the second act that what he thought was good and evil in the first …

Sarastro's Repentance: One Dramaturg's Advice On The Magic Flute, Michael Evenden

BYU Studies Quarterly

Traditionally, the scholar of dramatic literature and the director of plays (or the stage director of an opera) are opposed figures. Despite common passions, they have different goals, methods, and materials. In the end, a scholar's polished critical argument and a director's persuasive theatrical performance are held to be two decidedly different things. But a dramaturg (a kind of in-house scholarly advisor to the theater or opera company) attempts to be a scholar of dramatic literature and theatrical history and, at the same time, a canny and practical advisor to the artistic team of an actual stage production. A dramaturg …

The Queen Of The Night: A Mother Betrayed, Victoria A. Webb

BYU Studies Quarterly

It may be difficult for some to understand how any mother could sincerely sing both arias assigned to the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute. Indeed, most critics assume she is insincere, at best. In her first aria, the Queen expresses desperate suffering caused by the abduction of her daughter, Pamina. In the second, Pamina has safely returned to her mother's embrace, only to be confronted with her "wrath of hell." I recently gained some insight into this inconsistency when I came face to face with a mother's wrath. On a long train ride, I sat next …

Die Zauberflöte: What's In A Title?, Harrison Powley

BYU Studies Quarterly

Scholars have argued over Die Zauberflöte for many years. Is it a fairy-tale opera, a metaphorical discussion of Masonic and Rosicrucian beliefs, or a contemporary political or philosophical commentary on the 1780s and the Enlightenment? It can be all these and more, but for many in the audience during fall 1791 it was entertainment, pure and simple. The audience at the Theater auf der Weiden came from all levels of society. The nobility and educated attended as well as the working and servant classes.

Monostatos, The Moor, David P. Crandall

BYU Studies Quarterly

Monostatos, captain of Sarastro's guard and clandestine admirer of Pamina, is a character of frustrated villainy. Duplicitous, cowardly, and often dull-witted, he is bound to a menial social position and blinded, by a self-imposed ignorance that prevents him from realizing his ambitions. As an opportunist, Monostatos is entirely unsuccessful—his schemes and machinations never quite pan out. Yet of all the nationalities and peoples he could represent, why is Monostatos cast as a Moor? Why not a Greek or a Jew or a Dane? Is it simply his Moorish background that makes of him a rather odious and pathetic creature, or …

Diese Aufnahme Ist Bezaubernd Schön: Deutsche Grammophon's 1964 Recording Of The Magic Flute, Aaron Dalton

BYU Studies Quarterly

Singing speaks most eloquently for itself in real time and doesn't fall into words on paper very easily," writes a former voice teacher of mine. "It is either beautiful or it isn't. If it's beautiful, words aren't adequate. If it isn't, words about it have to be either false or cruel." Why, then, would I offer the following dissection of what I believe to be the greatest recording of arguably the greatest opera? And how, with a glut of Magic Flute recording on the market (I aborted my tally at over forty casts on dozens of labels), can I presume …

Adaptation, Enactment, And Ingmar Bergman's Magic Flute, Dean W. Duncan

BYU Studies Quarterly

For all of its manifold musical glories, The Magic Flute was and is a theatrical work, meant for production and performance, and that repeatedly. As such, I will be concentrating on the opera's theatrical and cinematic elements. This article treats Ingmar Bergman's felicitous 1975 film adaptation of opera. Those inclined can find much to complain about in Bergman's cinematic version of Mozart's opera, but I would like to suggest that, with sympathy and openness, this complaining could give way to approval and great gratitude. In this Magic Flute, we have an interpretation worthy of its source, which is saying …

From Arcadia To Elysium In The Magic Flute And Weimar Classicism: The Plan Of Salvation And Eighteenth-Century Views Of Moral Progression, John B. Fowles

BYU Studies Quarterly

The painful sighs are now past.

Elysium's joyful banquets

Drown the slightest moan—

Elysium's life is

Eternal rapture, eternal flight;

Through laughing meadows a brook pipes its tune.

..........

Here faithful couples embrace each other,

Kiss on the velvet green sward

As the soothing west wind caresses them;

Here love is crowned,

Safe from death's merciless blow

It celebrates an eternal wedding feast.

—Friedrich Schiller

European Views Of Egyptian Magic And Mystery: A Cultural Context For The Magic Flute, Kerry Muhlestein

BYU Studies Quarterly

Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder lived and created during the height of eighteenth-century interest in and fascination with Egypt. The Magic Flute's Egyptial setting would therefore evoke in their contemporaneous audience notions of a distant land with an exotic and magical culture. The numerous Egyptian elements of the world are representative of its era and are situated near the end of a continuum of European thought about ancient Egypt before the solid foundation of modern day Egyptology had been laid. To Europeans, Egypt was a murky and mysterious landscape, one that easily lent itself to imaginative …

"Initiates Of Isis Now, Come, Enter Into The Temple!": Masonic And Enlightenment Thought In The Magic Flute, Paul E. Kerry

BYU Studies Quarterly

Habakkuk exclaimed that in the presence of Lord the "sun and moon stood still in their habitation." The Empryean (Canto XXXII) of Dante's Paradiso concludes with the splendid phrase "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle" (the Love which moves the sun and the other stars). And in 1945 when Harry S Truman realized the weight of the office he would inherit upon the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he declared, "I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me." It seems that when prophets, poets, and presidents have the need to …

An Allegory Of Eden: Marc Chagall's Magic Flute Poster, Philipp B. Malzl

BYU Studies Quarterly

"For me there is nothing on earth that approaches those two perfections, The Magic Flute and the Bible."

—Marc Chagall

Set Design For The Final Scene In The Magic Flute, Michael P. Lyon

BYU Studies Quarterly

STAGE DIRECTIONS. The stage is transformed into a sunburst; Sarastro appears on high; Tamino and Pamina are in priestly robes, surrounded on both sides by the Egyptian priests; the Three Boys offer flowers. (2.30)

Mann Und Weib, And Baby Makes Two: Gender And Family In Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's Sequel To The Magic Flute, Robert B. Mcfarland

BYU Studies Quarterly

Latter-day Saints never grow tired of pointing out that Restoration scriptures and revelations could have not come forth in any other place than America. But the Restoration also came forth in a specific time, a period of important historical movements and cultural developments. It behooves us to deepen our understanding of the profound importance to the Restoration of the historical moment—not only through our study of political, religious, and biographical documents of the time but also through a careful consideration of the literature and art that interact with some of the most profound cultural and historical discourses of the late …