The Multiple Endings of the Magic Flute

Barbora Horáková comes from the Czech Republic. She began a promising singing career as a member of the International Swiss Opera Studio, studied opera directing at the Bavarian Theater Academy, gained important professional experience as a stage manager and dramaturge at Theater Basel and is now an internationally sought-after music theater director. She spent four years preparing for her new production of The Magic Flute. Two weeks after rehearsals began, she shared some of her thoughts and experiences on this opera with Sergio Morabito.

The opera is called The Magic Flute. For me, that means there has to be magic and there has to be a flute. The sound of a flute, which is heard repeatedly as a soloist in the piece, is something ancient. The flute is perhaps the oldest instrument we have that has undergone an evolution due to a human curiosity that is in us. Perhaps it was like this: a bone had a hole in it, and it made a sound when it was blown through. And then there was another hole that sounded different. And this sound does something to the people who listen. This sound, this art, this music, this something that we have invented, leads us back to ourselves: that we humans are both good and evil, but that good can perhaps still prevail in a certain harmony.

The amazing thing is that The Magic Flute has been a hit right from the start because it is so accessible. The dialogues mean that it is not as hermetically sealed as other operas and so opens itself up to everyone. And everyone knows the melody of more than just one aria: you can sing all the numbers in The Magic Flute . So it sounds simple, but when you look into the score, you realize how incredibly constructed it is, what's in these chords and why exactly this chord is in exactly this place... You'll never finish if you really want to understand it all! It's a lifetime's work. That's the great thing: that this piece manages to make us rack our brains. And that in the end it is accessible to everyone and that everyone can really identify with it to some extent.

If you start to think about The Magic Flute and really go deeper, you get crazier and crazier, and you understand less and less. That's what I find so incredible: the many different perspectives that the piece offers. Do you concentrate on the symbolic aspects or on a historical contextualization? Is the opera actually a comedy or just a fairy tale? Should it all make sense or should it make no sense?

We know that fairy tales always conceal a great deal of philosophical and symbolic content. You can say things, for example about political systems, that you are not always allowed to say out loud, but only through a fairytale veil or mask. The Queen of the Night is initially the suffering mother who then becomes the evil one who wants to harm humanity. But if you investigate her story, you realize what traumas are at work in this character. The injustice that happened when something was taken from her and she can't come to terms with it. As is often the case when traumas are perpetuated and cannot be stopped. This then leads to an endless conflict, as in Israel and Palestine. You can take a very global view of it all, and then it spins in your head. Even with Sarastro and his gentlemen's club: you think that at the beginning he is actually a dictator who really keeps things under control, who is also very clever and knows how to do that. But then he becomes more and more human. As a woman, I'm initially frightened by this whole hierarchy and elitism, in which women have no place at all. But then at the end I think: maybe the man does mean well somehow, even if he is using all the wrong means. Perhaps he understands that wisdom and reason should not be misused to maintain power. And perhaps this also makes him a little more feminine and softer.

I always think that The Magic Flute has several endings. It has a fairy-tale ending, after the two protagonists have passed a test. But you don't really know: was that really the test? Was it the end of the test? When did the exam begin? What were the tests before that? Why is Pamina only involved in these exams at the end? And then you realize: she has actually always been part of the trial! Because when Tamino is taken away, she is already there. Who is actually being tested here? This is also where her trial begins, because she has to accept that someone might die. Like the Ukrainian mothers, wives, sisters and lovers who have to accept that their husbands are going to war. And that is the test: this eternal fear and uncertainty of possibly losing a loved one. And that's why I made a change and moved the trio of Pamina, Tamino and Sarastro from the end of the second act, "Shall I see you no more, dear one?", to the beginning of the act. When we begin with this, we understand that a test is also imposed on her. And then comes another test, a test of silence: Tamino no longer speaks to her and yet she must not lose hope. And then she actually physically walks with him through the fire and the floods of water. So this piece, which at first reading seems misogynistic, has a protagonist, a Pamina, who is actually the one who holds everything together.

And that's why I want the two of them to grow older in the play, to age. So that you learn: we are there to try to understand things and in the end we may not understand anything, but we stay together. It's about this proof of love, that you stay together in the good and the bad and are prepared to go through pain. That's why Pamina and Tamino carry these dolls of old people with them at the end. And then the dolls are gone and they stay and you start all over again. The learning never stops. That's one conclusion.

And then there is a second ending: we experience Papageno's happiness, which has led him to a loved one. After all, we need companionship. We must be able to feel love and give love. Even a birdcatcher cannot accept being alone and actually longs for someone. And he senses this very early on in a duet with Pamina, which for me contains the whole philosophy of the world: "man and woman and woman and man reach out to the Deity", and regardless of whether it is woman and woman or man and man: together with someone, you simply become greater and can surpass yourself in a different way than if you remain alone. Papageno, as a bird-catcher or bird-man, is a fairy-tale character and at the same time the most human figure in the play. He reveals that as human beings we have faults and that the system within us sometimes doesn't work properly. He says quite clearly: "sometimes it's better if I just sit in a pub and have fun with friends and don't have to understand the whole world and all its horrors. Which of course doesn't mean that he doesn't feel it. Papageno is someone who is also very sad at the beginning: he catches live birds, which he then hands over to the queen in the knowledge that they won't live much longer. But that is his job. And he is someone who is incredibly lonely.

And the third conclusion is Monostatos, the Queen and the three ladies, who try to achieve something like an evil conclusion. But the evil is so musically caricatured here that you can hardly take it seriously. For me, it's as if the characters are no longer the characters they were before, but are simply there to remind us: "don't forget the evil! Evil exists, but if we all stick together, we can fight it." When I think of the children who will be watching, I want them to be able to laugh about it.

And then comes the very last ending: the triumphant, very short ending when everyone meets again. It abandons the fairytale in favor of pure humanity, which was already anticipated by the "Holy Halls" as a hope or a hint: We see how people who come on stage in very private everyday clothes embrace a Pamina who is still in her costume. In The Magic Flute we find these contrasts: darkness and light, death and life, minor and major. You are in one world and then suddenly in another. This magic is the beauty of the Magic Flute. It is also the illogical. I also play with the illogical. At first we are in a room that seems ancient, and then it suddenly comes to life when Sarastro arrives, and it's as if the room shines with the glamor that filled it a hundred years ago. At the end, when Pamina wants to kill herself and the boys try to prevent this, the room is once again ruined and snow-covered - and at the very end there is no more room. We are in the here and now and we hear and sing how it will still be sung in twenty years' time. Let's try to just be there and make music, maybe open our hearts, and come out of this opera as perhaps better people. I don't know. That's very high and mighty, of course, and I certainly don't want to point the moral finger.

Personally, I'm a very emotional person, I think. I always try to understand things through my emotions. I've experienced a lot because of my background and my family history. But I'm lucky that I've always felt this love in my family, despite totalitarian systems. What I felt was that you should never stop believing in people. That you can create good things. That you should never stop believing. That shaped me a lot. That's why none of the many stories that this opera tells are unbelievable to me. I think that this is exactly what could happen.