[The Magic Flute]
directed by Ingmar Bergman

screen adaptation by Ingmar Bergman of the opera Die Zauberflöte (1791)
music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder

135 min.

I have some difficulty with opera – like most people, but not like most people who enjoy classical music – and though this charming film version (“congenial,” the Bergman website calls it) was both appealing and comprehensible to me, it was because of the ways that it smoothed over and touched up the weird, barbed edges of the original form. Watching the easy film while listening to the zany opera (so to speak) I was made, perhaps, even more aware of that strangeness that lurks in so much purportedly accessible classical music, distressingly strange because it goes uncommented upon.

Here, hiding under my own little soapbox, I can ask the stupid questions to which I still have no satisfactory answers. It’s really just one big stupid question with many examples. The question is: why doesn’t the music in opera sound like what it should, dramatically? For example, why does the famous second aria of the Queen of the Night (you know, the piping coloratura thing that you’ve heard before) sound like that? It sounds like some kind of birdlike jubilation, no? But the thing is actually “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” – “Hell’s Vengeance Boils in My Heart” – and, by all normal dramatic appearances, it ought to be a threatening, frightening moment. At the very least, even if we disregard the dramatic context, you’d think that, taking a cue from the lyric, it would sound angry. But musically it sounds like, you’ll pardon me, a choo-choo train.

Now, I’m always ready and willing to give art the benefit of the doubt, and try to open my mind. I think that’s my responsibility. Especially when the judgment of Western Civilization As A Whole is more favorable than mine, it seems like some good-faith effort ought to be made. And I can easily concoct a long string of possible justifications for this (and, in general, for this sort of thing), most of which I even find fairly convincing.

1. This is only a part of the aria as a whole. The first few bars of the aria, accompanying the actual “Hell’s Vengeance” lyric, do sound rather angry, are suitably minor-key (as is the conclusion of the aria), and in general make dramatic sense. The central, superficially cheerier section should be seen as added to, not distractedly departing from, this context.

2. The peculiarity is purposeful. The juxtaposition of the superficial musical “cheeriness” against the already-established dramatic/expressive tone of hatred creates an intentionally grotesque effect, suggesting madness and evil. This is heightened by the unnervingly abstract lapse into non-linguistic sound.

3. It’s not really so far off the mark. The music may not be expressing “scary” or “violent,” but it is pretty clearly expressing “intimidating,” “imperious,” and “wild,” none of which particularly necessitates, say, minor chords.

4. The aria is primarily a showcase. The extremity of the vocal display is itself the characterization. The design of the music is only partly expressive, partly a vehicle for this display. In this latter capacity, it might stray a bit from the pure dramatic content of the moment, but one’s attention is meant to be on the spectacular performance, from whence the character flows.

5. The aria is only part of the opera as a whole. Part of the ethereal distinction of The Magic Flute is its overall use of a simple, almost naive harmonic language. The oddity of the present case arises from the choice of this peculiarly uncomplicated “sound world” and should be taken as part of the effect for which the opera is known, of mysteriously innocent resonance.

6. As always, the historical consideration. Back then, dramatic situations played a little differently; musico-dramatic associations were a little different, and, most importantly, those parts of music that were so conventional as to be ignorable were different. Mozart would no doubt wonder why all of our love songs are so violently motoric and have all that percussion in them, which to him would sound Turkish or Oriental. In part, the violence he would hear in our pop is an intended effect, but the effect is muted for us because it conforms so comfortably to stylistic norms. The expressive quirks of the Queen of the Night’s aria would have been similarly muted to a contemporary audience.

7. Of course it seems unnatural; it’s a song. The ideals that seem to me natural regarding the continuity and “realism” of musical expression in a dramatic context are the product of my time, and became part of the culture only in the late nineteenth-century, or even more recently. The far-more-absurd inaptness of “Shipoopi” was still viable as of 1957. Perhaps the only thing lacking from my appreciation of this aria is my readiness to hear it as a “number” in its own right. And yet this is, in fact, how I tend to hear it at first, because of its fame. So maybe that’s right on the money. This film version, by doing something boldly dark during the sequence – the Queen’s face floats past, ghostly and masklike, staring at the camera, as she sings – happened to make this interpretation less natural than it would have been under normal performance circumstances.

As I said, these are all pretty convincing to me. But my point here is that it is still not clear to me which of these are the “real” explanations, since all of them are after-the-fact inventions, and so I am still left having the same authentic reaction to operas time after time, which is: what happened to the drama? Why are you doing… that? and that? and that? And it frustrates me, as it does with classical music in general, when attempts to serve this stuff up to a general audience reassure us that all we need to do is either a) just sit back and trust our reactions, or b) study up until we know the names, dates, and keywords. Neither of which helps me with the harder problem. I’ve come to some of the answers for instrumental music myself, and am eager to try to share them with others, but they’re hard to communicate. But maybe that’s only because I end up formulating the questions on the behalf of uninterested people and then forcing information on them. I think if a person came to me with sincere questions I’d have helpful answers. Is there someone out there who can give me helpful answers to my sincere questions, here, about opera?

As for Bergman, he has, as per his reputation, a sure hand and a very warm touch. The film does a remarkable, loving job of showing us what is universal and humanistic about this thoroughly nonsensical material. Bergman’s affection for the theater itself, for its homey and gentle mysteries, is used to frame and support the opera itself, to excellent effect. We hear the rumblings of scenery moving, get playful glimpses behind the scenes, and during occasional scene-changes, keep cutting back to the little girl in the audience, whose happiness is in itself a part of the message. The opera is some sort of an ode to the ideals (for Mozart and Schikaneder, Masonic ideals) of love and wisdom, and the generosity and humanity of the theater itself is a reflection of its vision. Or so Bergman is saying, and I don’t think anyone would claim that Mozart and Schikaneder would object.

There’s something intimate and suitable about the close-miking of the spoken dialogue. At the beginning, when we hear the three ladies whispering to Tamino, their whispers seem to be coming from extremely close by; much of the sound had that soothing effect of things heard while waking from a nap.

I like the handling of the overture, cutting from audience member to audience member, though one ends up thinking about Swedish racial features more than is probably desirable. The cutting does not strictly synchronize with the rhythmic play of the music, though it suggests it, which sets the stage for the relationship the film will bear to the music throughout – moved by it more than with it. But this is probably appropriate with Mozart. Like I said above, I’m in no position to say how such things should be done. I know that Bergman loved music but considered himself to have a poor ear. The film presumes to join forces with the drama but lets the music itself issue from somewhere above and beyond.

Tamino and Papageno both seemed just right to me. Sarastro’s appearance and voice seemed a little lacking given that he’s supposed to be The Embodiment of The Powers of Goodness and Light. Pamina was a bit chilly. Lovely sets.

This is the second time I’ve seen this. I can imagine myself watching it yet again some time. It has a quiet, children’s book peace to it that seems like it might remain inviting. But not for a while, anyway.

This was Criterion Collection #71. No “extras,” by the way, and though it was apparently from a new print, it still had visible splices in it, plus some odd flickering. It was still nice to look at. The Flowers of St. Francis, which I wrote about in February, was Criterion Collection #293. That leaves 350 that I haven’t talked about. I’ll let you know.