This chapter offers an account of the circumstances surrounding the creation of The Magic Flute and its earliest performances. Through an examination of the latest research and documentary evidence, alongside established accounts and early iconography, this essay considers how audiences may have experienced the opera in 1791. “The Magic Flute in 1791” thus contextualizes the genesis and earliest stagings of the work not as Mozart’s final opera, but rather as the product of a particular historical moment.

The arias in Mozart’s The Magic Flute are some of the most vivid and enduring in the operatic repertoire. This chapter examines how poetic structures, musical and dramatic conventions, and the abilities of the singers who originated the roles shaped their creation. While many writers focus primarily on musical form when analyzing arias, this study reveals that other elements contribute as much or more to the aria’s expressivity and the dramaturgical role it plays. Analysis also demonstrates how each aria in this work contains something unusual or extravagant – a musical element or moment that stretches the customary practices of eighteenth-century music. This fact alongside the arias’ diversity of style, color, and affect suggests the composer took great care to make each one distinctive. Consequently, Mozart’s skill and creativity was and is on display. Thus, the arias make manifest one of the opera’s main themes: the power of music.

This chapter looks at critical writings on The Magic Flute, focusing on the different periods in which it first came to prominence in Germanic, French, and Anglophone countries, as well as at contributions made by Mozart’s major nineteenth-century biographers (Ignaz Arnold, Georg von Nissen, Alexandre Oulibicheff, Edward Holmes, Otto Jahn, Ludwig Nohl).  It also studies a representative sample of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary works and visual media – by Goethe, Heribert Rau, Heinrich Smidt, Lotte Reiniger, G. Lowes Dickinson, Karl Hartl – that reference or are inspired by the opera.  Common themes in all areas of reception include the harsh treatment of Schikaneder, and a Mozartian narrative combining a creative peak with fatal physical decline.

While the finales of The Magic Flute owe much to the standard model that Mozart drew upon in the finales of his Da Ponte operas, they also show features not typically seen in opera buffa finales. Three of these features can be clearly seen in the finales of Schikaneder’s earlier Singspiele at the Theater auf der Wieden. They are: the use of feierlich music (often in march style) for ceremonial, quasi-religious or magical scenes; greater attention to sets and set changes in Schikaneder’s lavish productions; and a looser, more episodic approach to the structure of a finale, with sharp changes in musical style that heighten the sense of separation from one section to the next. Though they resemble the finales of Schikaneder’s other Singspiele, Mozart’s Magic Flute finales are more effective, with superior musical invention and more sharply characterized dramatic moments.

This chapter focuses on The Magic Flute’s links to theatrical aesthetics of the Vienna court theater as well as debates surrounding the late eighteenth-century calls for the establishment of a German national theater tradition. This exploration suggests that Mozart’s unique experiences with the world of late eighteenth-century German theater traditions shaped The Magic Flute’s libretto significantly. Mozart’s contributions to Schikaneder’s libretto in fact enhance the work’s status as both a culmination of decades-long debates about German national theater and a harbinger of a future course for German national opera.

The Magic Flute was written specifically for the Freihaus Theater auf der Wieden. As such, it is useful to consider the physical aspects and the history of the building as well as some of the other repertory that was performed there around the same time. When we include works that were performed in the Theater in der Leopoldstadt under the direction of Karl Marinelli – Schikaneder’s main rival – we can see that they share some musical and theatrical aspects of The Magic Flute. Plot lines or character types that found favor with audiences were reproduced in various works at both suburban theaters, allowing a faster creative process and resulting in a somewhat formulaic product. This adds to the notion that while The Magic Flute is certainly an exceptional work, it was, nevertheless, significantly influenced by the popular entertainment common in Viennese theaters of the eighteenth century.