Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to The Magic Flute
- Cambridge Companions to Music
- The Cambridge Companion to The Magic Flute
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Musical Examples
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Conception and Context
- Part II Music, Text, and Action
- Part III Approaches and Perspectives
- Part IV Reception, Interpretation, and Influence
- 17 Zauberflöte: A Cultural Phenomenon in an Age of Revolution
- 18 The Magic Flute in Biography, Criticism, and Literature
- 19 The Elusive Compositional History of The Magic Flute
- 20 Staging The Magic Flute
- 21 Ingmar Bergman’s Film Version of The Magic Flute
- Further Reading
- Index
21 - Ingmar Bergman’s Film Version of The Magic Flute
from Part IV - Reception, Interpretation, and Influence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2023
- The Cambridge Companion to The Magic Flute
- Cambridge Companions to Music
- The Cambridge Companion to The Magic Flute
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Musical Examples
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Conception and Context
- Part II Music, Text, and Action
- Part III Approaches and Perspectives
- Part IV Reception, Interpretation, and Influence
- 17 Zauberflöte: A Cultural Phenomenon in an Age of Revolution
- 18 The Magic Flute in Biography, Criticism, and Literature
- 19 The Elusive Compositional History of The Magic Flute
- 20 Staging The Magic Flute
- 21 Ingmar Bergman’s Film Version of The Magic Flute
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
This chapter recounts the history, context, and significance of Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 film adaptation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Whereas films from theatrical or operatic sources tend to distance themselves from stage artifice, Bergman’s production emphasizes and revels in it. In doing so, it also comments on and, in some ways, turns from the work for which he is best known, celebrated and, sometimes, excoriated. The Enlightenment optimism of Mozart’s text provides a sharp contrast to Bergman’s brand of anxious, often agonized high modernism. It also provides a foil, both heartening and convincing, to the direness so often evident in 1970s cinema, and in the life and discourse surrounding it.
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- The Cambridge Companion to The Magic Flute , pp. 333 - 342Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023