12 - Seeking Enlightenment in Mozart’s Magic Flute

Summary

What is Enlightenment? In a certain sense, The Magic Flute may be understood as a playing out of Immanuel Kant’s answer to that question: “Sapere aude! [dare to know] – Have the courage to use your own understanding” – a challenge that is at the core of Tamino’s perilous journey. But the idea of Enlightenment and the complexity of original thought encompassed under its banner demands of us that we examine the deeper questions that it asks: What view of Enlightenment is conveyed in Mozart’s music and Schikaneder’s libretto, and how does this view accord with those strains of thought and expression, of wit and sensibility, that we take to constitute the defining aura of the Enlightenment? The great arias of Tamino and Pamina, studied as embodiments of these qualities, are viewed against the master plots of the opera.