Katie McNeill
[To listen to the aria under discussion please click
here]
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Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) is a masterpiece of eighteenth-century philosophy,
in which the wise and enlightened Sarastro defeats the darkly powerful Queen of
the Night. In this opera, the Queen’s
daughter, Pamina, is kidnapped (or rather rescued) by Sarastro, and the Queen
sends the young Tamino to bring her daughter home, promising that Tamino can
marry the young woman when she is returned safely. When Tamino reaches Pamina, he is won over by
SarastroÂ’s wisdom, and instead of returning the young woman to the Queen, he
stays and becomes SarastroÂ’s disciple.Â
Tamino must undergo a number of trials (of the intellect) in order to
prove himself worthy, and as a prize, he is given PaminaÂ’s hand.
The opposition
of the Queen and Sarastro in MozartÂ’s opera is characteristic of the art of the
Enlightenment, where an absolute rule is defeated in the face of the rule of
reason. While this division does not
seem to fit neatly into NietzscheÂ’s philosophy, one could in fact argue that
the Queen is characteristic of a Wagnerian or Dionysian figure. She is guided by dark passion and wildness,
and her power succeeds because she is able to charm the masses with her beauty
and keep them under control by promoting superstitious belief. In fact, one could compare the power of the
Queen to that of Wagner himself, for both pull the masses down, bringing about
“that weary shuffling along of the soul which is no longer able either to
spring or to fly, nay, which is no longer able to walk” (Contra 58). Thus, in the
face of the Queen, Tamino loses himself and his sense of personal power - in
Nietzsche’s words, Tamino “ultimately abandons [himself] to the mercy or fury
of the elements: [he] has to swim” (61).Â
Only when he comes into contact with Sarastro is he able to regain his
control and move out of the darkness into the light.Â
The QueenÂ’s
Dionysian character is best demonstrated in her famous aria “Der Hölle Rache
kocht in meinem Herzen” (“Hell’s Revenge Boils in my Heart”), in which the
Queen tries to convince her daughter Pamina to murder Sarastro and thus enact
her mother’s revenge. The most well
known feature of this aria is that it reaches a high F6, which only very few
sopranos can achieve, and in fact the range of the singer is likely the first
thing one notices when listening to this piece.Â
On a purely emotional level, the bright and leaping high notes seem to
reflect Nietzsche’s call for music that “runs with light feet” rather than
dragging one down into decadence.Â
Without attending to the words, the listener might initially be raised
up by the aria into the very state or joy or cheerfulness through which,
Nietzsche argues, music “emancipates the spirit” and “gives wings to thought” (The Case 2).
The effect of
the Queen’s song, however, is not at all an elevation of the listener. Rather, like Wagner’s music, the queen’s song
lulls the listener into a state of blindness (Verblendung) that prevents reflection. (The Queen swayed Tamino
this way in an earlier aria.)Â In
Nietzsche’s terms, both the Queen and Wagner are “virtuosos to their backbone,
knowing of secret passages to all that seduces, lures, constrains or
overthrows; born enemies of logic and of straight lines, thirsting after the
exotic, the strange and the monstrous, and all opiates for the senses and the
understanding” (Contra 69-70). While Wagner used the effects of the tragic
and the sublime to sway the masses, the QueenÂ’s lies are cloaked in beauty and
mystery. Because of the Queen’s
seductive power, Nietzsche would likely joy at her defeat at the end of the
opera. Sarastro’s last
line, in fact, might find its way into Nietzsche own prose: “Die Strahlen der
Sonne vertreiben die Nacht, Zernichten der Heuchler erschlichene Macht.” (“The
rays of the sun drive away the night, destroyed is the hypocritesÂ’
surreptitious power.”[i]) Nietzsche would surely hope for the same fate
for Wagner and his music.Â
At the same
time, the philosopher would not be likely to jump for joy at SarastroÂ’s
victory, which is based on a loss of innocence this time through normalization
instead of seduction. At the end of the
opera, Tamino wins PaminaÂ’s hand only through the suppression of his own joyful
individuality. To succeed, he must
surrender himself to SarastroÂ’s trials, which are based on a submission of self
to intellect (reason). If Nietzsche’s
philosophy were really to be acted out in the Zauberflöte, Tamino would not have to go through this directed
search for the truth, but rather would win the girl through the attainment of
self-release or self-elevation. This
search for truth, according to Nietzsche blinds or distracts from the ideal
state as much as the QueenÂ’s Verblendung,
for “We no longer believe that truth remains truth when it is unveiled, . . . To-day it seems to us
good form not to strip everything naked, not to be present at all things, not
to desire to ‘know’ all. Tout comprendre c’est tout mépriser.” (Contra 82). Therefore, while the Queen’s
song reflects what Nietzsche most hates in WagnerÂ’s music, MozartÂ’s opera does
not demonstrate an enactment of NietzscheÂ’s philosophy, but rather a trading of
a modern failure of self for an older one.
[i] Translation of die Zauberflöte found at http://www.aria-database.com/translations/magic_flute.txt.