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The Cambridge Companion to The Magic Flute
  • Edited by Jessica Waldoff
  • Published online:
    24 November 2023
    Print publication:
    02 November 2023
  • Since its premiere in 1791, The Magic Flute has been staged continuously and remains, to this day, Mozart's most-performed opera worldwide. This comprehensive, user-friendly, up-to-date critical guide considers the opera in a variety of contexts to provide a fresh look at a work that has continued to fascinate audiences from Mozart's time to ours. It serves both as an introduction for those encountering the opera for the first time and as a treasury of recent scholarship for those who know it very well. Containing twenty-one essays by leading scholars, and drawing on recent research and commentary, this Companion presents original insights on music, dialogue, and spectacle, and offers a range of new perspectives on key issues, including the opera's representation of exoticism, race, and gender. Organized in four sections – historical context, musical analysis, critical approaches, and reception – it provides an essential framework for understanding The Magic Flute and its extraordinary afterlife.

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Jessica Waldoff, College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to <i>The Magic Flute</i>
    Published online:
    24 November 2023
    Print publication:
    02 November 2023, pp 1-6

  • Summary

    In the years since its premiere, The Magic Flute has been written about in a variety of contexts, by a multitude of authors, and from a dizzying range of perspectives. While it would be impossible for any single volume to adequately capture the range and complexity of two centuries’ worth of research, commentary, and performance, this Cambridge Companion to “The Magic Flute” provides twenty-one essays on diverse topics, all newly written expressly for this collection. One important predecessor to this volume is Peter Branscombe’s 1991 Cambridge Opera Handbook, W. A. Mozart: “Die Zauberflöte.” Since that time, however, there have been significant documentary discoveries and developments. A wealth of recent scholarship – ranging from books on Mozart and his contemporaries to studies of opera as a genre to explorations of Mozart’s contemporary Viennese and German contexts – has broadened the contexts in which we understand this opera. This Companion provides up-to-date commentary and interpretation in a single volume, with special emphasis on four key areas.

  • 15 - Pamina, the Queen, and the Representation of Women

  • from Part III - Approaches and Perspectives
  • Edited by Jessica Waldoff, College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to <i>The Magic Flute</i>
    Published online:
    24 November 2023
    Print publication:
    02 November 2023, pp 234-251

  • Summary

    This chapter draws on conceptions of gender in Mozart’s time and ours to explore the opera’s representation of women. This aspect of The Magic Flute, including the misogynistic statements of the priests, is now widely regarded as problematic. The opera sets the rule of Sarastro and his brotherhood against the Queen and her entourage, and the focus on this conflict between the sexes has to some degree obscured the opera’s focus on the construction of gender in the characterization of Pamina and the Queen. Gender is performed on stage within an established context and frame of reference. Pamina is a sentimental heroine whose idealized image, abduction, and abandonment prove her moral virtue; the Queen is a dark and vengeful mother who refuses to accept her restricted position. This focus allows us to see how both mother and daughter complicate patriarchal assumptions by raising important questions about gender and power.

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