Not quite sure why it took me most of a lifetime to finally make up my mind to sit and listen to Mozart's The Magic Flute from start to finish. That's what I did this morning and I'm extremely glad I did. The opera transported me to a very special place of the imagination, the one where all contraries seem to be resolved, at least while the music lasts.
The work is all archetypes; it speaks of things known perfectly well, which yet seem strangely new and original. One simple, but not so simple, example: the sequence in which Papageno and Papagena sing of their intention to marry and have children is wonderfully juxtaposed to the final induction of Tamino and Pamina into the Masonic mysteries; the splendid earthiness of the former grounds the splendid spirituality of the latter in a supremely wise balance. It's all so obvious you feel like you have already been told, or somehow experienced, the tale.
And the tunes!! Sublime.
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