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| The Three Ladies save Tamino from a serpent . . . for some reason. |
1.
By the end of the opera, it is pretty well established that the Three Ladies, like the Queen of the Night whom they serve, are baddies -- but we first see them in the role of good Samaritans, rescuing Tamino (a stranger) from the serpent that is pursuing him. Their motive for doing so is not clear. They then report him to the Queen, thinking that he may be able to help her by extricating her daughter Pamina from the clutches of Sarastro. Why they think someone they themselves have just had to rescue would be a good choice for rescuing someone else is even less clear. Since the Ladies are clearly much more powerful than Tamino, why don't they go rescue Pamina themselves?
2.
Papageno says that he makes a living by catching birds for the Queen and her Ladies in exchange for food and drink. We never find out why the Queen wants or needs a steady supply of live birds or what she does with them.
3.
The Three Boys seem to be clearly good, but they also apparently work for the Queen. At any rate, it is the Three Ladies who inform Tamino and Papageno that the Boys will be their guides.
4.
Sarastro says that the whole reason he seized Pamina from her mother (the Queen) was so that he could have her marry Tamino -- but the Queen apparently has no objection to that marriage, since she later offers Tamino Pamina's hand of her own initiative. If Tamino successfully returns Pamina to the Queen, the Queen will give her to him in marriage; if he fails, and she remains under the power of Sarastro, then Sarastro will give her to him in marriage. He is, so to speak, damed if he does and damed if he doesn't! It would appear that both Sarastro's abduction of Pamina and the Queen's rescue efforts are completely pointless, since they both want the same thing.
The most natural explanation is that Sarastro is simply lying to save face -- that his original intention was to marry Pamina himself but that, having found that she loves Tamino, he attempts to make a virtue of necessity. However, this is hardly in keeping with the godlike character Sarastro has been given.
Another possible explanation is that Sarastro's plan was to use the offer of Pamina to attract Tamino into joining their order -- and that the Queen is attempting to use the same bait to make Tamino into Sarastro's sworn enemy. But in that case it is strange that no representative of Sarastro ever attempted to contact Tamino. Perhaps Sarastro knew that his abducting Pamina would lead the Queen to send a hero to rescue her, and he was confident in his ability to convert that hero (whoever he might turn out to be) to his own side. Perhaps he even saw to it that Tamino would be chosen by sending the serpent to chase him to where he would be found by the Three Ladies? But all these possible plans of his seem unnecessarily convoluted.
5.
Papagena originally comes to Papageno disguised as a very old woman -- but then proceeds to tell him that she is 18 years old! Is she or is she not trying to deceive him regarding her age? The point of the disguise is never very clear. If it is to test whether Papageno can manifest True Love without regard to outer appearance, he can't really be said to have passed the test. He agrees to marry the old women only because he has been told (and he believes everything he is told) that he will die alone otherwise, and he promises to be faithful to her only "unless he finds someone prettier." Later the priests take Papagena away from him, saying he has not yet proven himself worthy -- but in the end she is given to him, and the only thing Papageno has done in the interim to prove his worthiness is to try to hang himself!
6.
Tamino is promised at the beginning that the titular magic flute can transform the passions of men -- but it never does that. Wild animals are attracted to its music, and he uses it to attract the attention of Papageno and Pamina, both of whom are already his friends. In the end, it is apparently the flute that allows Tamino and Pamina to pass through the fire and water unharmed -- the only remotely magical thing it ever does. Nowhere does it make mourners merry or make bachelors fall in love.
6 comments:
@Wm - You have missed-out the first and vital step of the analysis, and fallen into a sophomoric trap!
The first step is a full acknowledgment that Magic Flute is a great, therefore successful work of art, which is experienced as coherent.
With that fact established, then we can observe that the surface aspects of the plot don't make literal sense.
From which we can infer that whatever makes MF into a coherent and satifying work of art is not at the suface, literal, plot level of analysis; but needs to be sought elsewhere.
Then various candidates can be examined - the music is one major possibility; since this is an opera, and without the music would be just a pantomime. Musical analysis is difficult, however - and the results seldom reflect the experience (because such analysis entails a translation back and forth between music and words).
Another possibility for coherence is the unconscious, the implicit level. Here we would need to work from what is being implied and experienced; rather than from what is being stated.
And here we find the answer! (At least, that part which does not depend on the sublime music.) It can be expressed in Jungian terms - situations and plot fragments that correspond to archetypes and classic mythic tropes.
Or simply by intuitive reflection on the deep implicit effect of characters, scenes, transitions and the overall impact of experiencing MF.
Each of us who value MF can (probably should) do this for himself.
You're looking for sense in an opera libretto?! If you think the Magic Flute has anomalies, it's no worse than most other operas of the 18th and 19th centuries.
But, on a more series level, the sense is in Tamino's voyage of self-discovery and isolated incidents in that trajectory have to be seen in the light of the overall journey. Perhaps it's a bit like life which has a purpose even if the separate components of it may not seem to.
I should probably think of the libretto not as a drama with a plot in the conventional sense but as an extended set of song lyrics. We don't expect something like "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" or "Bohemian Rhapsody" to make narrative sense on the same level as a Sophocles play. As I've said, this is my first real experience with opera, and I'm still learning the conventions of the genre. I may have been misled by its superficial similarity to theater.
"Tamino's voyage of self-discovery"
And the parallel subplot of Papageno's journay. Tamino is the intelligent, self-conscious and heroic leader - Papageno is a 'natural man', unintelligent, with little self-awareness - decent and good hearted but with many weaknesses.
Papageno is essentially a man-child, not fully responsible - therefore does not have a quest, but rather is the subject of patronage; things are done to him and for him, because he is unable and unwilling to do anything for himself.
A lower level of salvation is appropriate for him, Paradise rather than Heaven - maybe the Telestial realm?
Yes, I found myself thinking of Papageno as (in very broad terms) Enkidu to Tamino's Gilgamesh.
They are almost like Frodo and Sam!
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