This study takes a novel approach, privileging opera arrangements over original operatic compositions, and the perspectives of amateur performers over those of composers. Several studies of opera arrangements from the era in question have already been published, which focus on particular composers or particular arrangement forms; and the emphasis lies on arrangements’ function as reception documents. This study differs in considering arrangements’ multiple functions, and ‘end users.

The manner in which Die Zauberflöte established itself as a cultural icon in late-eighteenth-century German society is remarkable. It permeated daily life in countless ways: fashion, pet naming, board games, risqué party entertainments, mechanical toys, children’s playlets, and whistling birds. While this represents the escapism of the opera’s fairy-tale plot, darker strands are woven into the fabric of its early reception. It swept across Europe during a period of bloody revolutionary war, and all sides made use of it in their political propaganda. Papageno was ensconced at the heart of the Prussian military establishment when one of his tunes was added to the carillon of the Potsdam Garnisonkirche. At the same time, his music, under the banner of freedom, entered the republican song repertoire. After Napoleon’s cataclysmic defeat near Leipzig in 1814, a satirist was quick to wish him a derisory farewell as he sailed back across the Rhine. What better choice than the language of the opera: auf wiedersehen!

Complaints about the libretto have long shadowed The Magic Flute. The spoken dialogue especially has been disparaged, first regarding plot and, recently, gender and race. This chapter argues that to cut the dialogue is to lose a wealth of detail with respect to character and plot that needs to be understood as essential to the dramatic action. It offers close readings starting at the level of words or phrases that cannot be lost without consequence. Issues examined in speech include class and institutional hypocrisy (Tamino and Papageno); gender (the Queen of the Night); race (Monostatos); and female ambition (Sarastro). Each character conveys in speech a desire to be seen beyond stereotype, demonstrated here alongside relevant social context in Mozart’s time and ours. With nuanced treatment of controversial issues, the chapter debunks a fundamentally flawed justification for cuts – that our society is morally superior to the one that produced this work.

This chapter explores how Czech translations and productions of Die Zauberflöte intertwined with the development of Czech national culture between the late eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries. The history of the Czech Zauberflöte adaptations illustrates the gradual transformation of the Czech national movement from a branch of Bohemian regional patriotism into a confident and even aggressive nationalistic movement with strong anti-German tendencies. Die Zauberflöte was the first Mozart opera to be translated into Czech in 1794. In the early nineteenth century, Czech nationalists called for a new translation that would express their anti-German sentiments. Similar sentiments also dominated Czech criticism of Die Zauberflöte in the 1860s, according to which Mozart’s Singspiel was inferior to his Italian operas. In the 1880s, the Czech National Theater managed to incorporate Die Zauberflöte into the canon of national operas, but only by suppressing Schikaneder’s original plot and rearranging Mozart’s music.