Amy Beach’s “dramatic works” encompass a select few compositions over the course of her career, united by shared themes and collaboration with other female artists: two dramatic unstaged arias for solo voice and orchestra, Eilende Wolken, Segler der Lüfte (1892) and Jephthah’s Daughter (1903); and her only opera, Cabildo (1932). These dramatic works are few and far between in her oeuvre, but they represent landmarks in her lifelong creative processes. Eilende Wolken, Beach’s first commissioned work, is one of the first examples of her use of folk song in her compositions. Jephthah’s Daughter is a challenging and mature work, straddling her years focused primarily on composition and the revival of her performing career. Cabildo is filled with borrowed folk song and her own melodies with a romantic plot set during a major American historical event, representing the qualities of American opera she suggested for years.

In the years since its premiere, The Magic Flute has been written about in a variety of contexts, by a multitude of authors, and from a dizzying range of perspectives. While it would be impossible for any single volume to adequately capture the range and complexity of two centuries’ worth of research, commentary, and performance, this Cambridge Companion to “The Magic Flute” provides twenty-one essays on diverse topics, all newly written expressly for this collection. One important predecessor to this volume is Peter Branscombe’s 1991 Cambridge Opera Handbook, W. A. Mozart: “Die Zauberflöte.” Since that time, however, there have been significant documentary discoveries and developments. A wealth of recent scholarship – ranging from books on Mozart and his contemporaries to studies of opera as a genre to explorations of Mozart’s contemporary Viennese and German contexts – has broadened the contexts in which we understand this opera. This Companion provides up-to-date commentary and interpretation in a single volume, with special emphasis on four key areas.

Many factors have worked against an understanding of the genesis of Die Zauberflöte. Few of the composer’s letters mention it. The work has no single dramatic or operatic model. Only a couple of sketches and drafts survive, and the autograph score is relatively free of significant compositional changes. Mozart did not live to see a revised production. The gaps have traditionally been filled with speculations and false histories: the claim that Karl Ludwig Giesecke was a co-author (he wasn’t); an assertion that the text in the libretto and score was not original (it is); a hypothesis of the creators’ change of plans mid-stream, leading to discontinuities between Acts 1 and 2 (this does not hold up); and endless theories of planned symbolism and allegory (mostly wild beyond credibility). But there is evidence of the opera’s creation in the libretto and its construction; in the autograph score; in surviving material from early performances; and in stage directions and other scenic clues. The picture that emerges suggests an opera that was much less stable than has been assumed, and of a work that underwent revision just like most stage works of the late eighteenth century.

This chapter offers an account of the circumstances surrounding the creation of The Magic Flute and its earliest performances. Through an examination of the latest research and documentary evidence, alongside established accounts and early iconography, this essay considers how audiences may have experienced the opera in 1791. “The Magic Flute in 1791” thus contextualizes the genesis and earliest stagings of the work not as Mozart’s final opera, but rather as the product of a particular historical moment.

This chapter provides an overview of the history, habits, and musico-dramatic conventions of German comic opera in German courtly theaters, the Burgtheater and Kärtnertortheater, and the three suburban theaters: the Theater in der Leopoldstadt, Theater auf der Wieden, and the Theater in der Josephstadt. Arguing for a transnational development of German opera, it delves deeply into paradigmatic examples of key moments in courtly and suburban theatrical life: Ignaz Umlauf’s Die Bergknappen (1778) and its relationship to resource extraction and mining in late eighteenth-century Vienna; Wranitzky’s Oberon (1789) and elements of magic opera in dialogue and in song; and finally, comic antics in Wenzel Müller’s Kaspar der Fagottist (1791).

The Magic Flute stands out for its eclectic blend of musical styles. While only one scene – the duet of the Armored Men in Act 2 – includes a confirmed musical quotation, some scholars have posited that the opera contains a multitude of musical borrowings and allusions. Flute’s referential character owes much to Mozart’s ingenious use of musical topics. However, allusions to specific works have also been proposed throughout the opera’s history. In 1950, A. Hyatt King assembled an inventory of Flute’s “sources and affinities,” suggesting many plausible but largely unsubstantiated melodic precedents in works by Mozart and others. Scholars have particularly disagreed about the “source” from which Mozart allegedly derived Papageno’s aria “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen.” As in the case of the duet of the Armored Men (which quotes a Lutheran chorale), the desire to link Mozart and J. S. Bach has led to divergent claims about the melody’s provenance.

Complaints about the libretto have long shadowed The Magic Flute. The spoken dialogue especially has been disparaged, first regarding plot and, recently, gender and race. This chapter argues that to cut the dialogue is to lose a wealth of detail with respect to character and plot that needs to be understood as essential to the dramatic action. It offers close readings starting at the level of words or phrases that cannot be lost without consequence. Issues examined in speech include class and institutional hypocrisy (Tamino and Papageno); gender (the Queen of the Night); race (Monostatos); and female ambition (Sarastro). Each character conveys in speech a desire to be seen beyond stereotype, demonstrated here alongside relevant social context in Mozart’s time and ours. With nuanced treatment of controversial issues, the chapter debunks a fundamentally flawed justification for cuts – that our society is morally superior to the one that produced this work.

The arias in Mozart’s The Magic Flute are some of the most vivid and enduring in the operatic repertoire. This chapter examines how poetic structures, musical and dramatic conventions, and the abilities of the singers who originated the roles shaped their creation. While many writers focus primarily on musical form when analyzing arias, this study reveals that other elements contribute as much or more to the aria’s expressivity and the dramaturgical role it plays. Analysis also demonstrates how each aria in this work contains something unusual or extravagant – a musical element or moment that stretches the customary practices of eighteenth-century music. This fact alongside the arias’ diversity of style, color, and affect suggests the composer took great care to make each one distinctive. Consequently, Mozart’s skill and creativity was and is on display. Thus, the arias make manifest one of the opera’s main themes: the power of music.

Music publishing historian William Arms Fisher asserted in 1933 that “The great music publishers were primarily great music-lovers.” Composer Amy Beach was fortunate to work with a dozen of these music-loving publishers during her career; among them were the leaders of several of America’s greatest houses, including Arthur P. Schmidt Company (Boston), G. Schirmer, Inc. (New York), Theodore Presser Company (Philadelphia), and Oliver Ditson Company (Boston). She knew many of her publishers personally, and their partnerships were rewarding and mutually beneficial. Beach’s compositions gained a wide public and provided a good income, and her publishers benefitted not only from estimable musical additions to their catalogues, but also by the fact that she was a woman and-equally important in the World War I era-an American. “Amy Beach and Her Publishers” examines Beach’s relationships with her publishers, as well as their commitment to publishing her music while also keeping an eye on customers’ wants and changing economic conditions.

Amy Beach’s career paralleled the rise of women’s clubs across America; the widespread amateur and professional musical organizations were important to her success. Gendered musical communities not only hosted Beach as both pianist and composer but provided commissions and audiences to purchase and perform her music, such as the thirty pieces she created for the women’s choruses associated with clubs. Beach and her compositions figured heavily in women’s organizations’ nationalistic agendas and were highlighted in their educational materials. Beach was active in the National Federation of Music Clubs, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National League of American Pen Women, and numerous other groups; her association with the NLAPW led to two White House appearances. These organizations provided her with supportive networks of like-minded women and deep friendships. In turn, Beach’s stature validated clubs’ efforts to promote America’s music and to make women central to its musical life.

This chapter looks at critical writings on The Magic Flute, focusing on the different periods in which it first came to prominence in Germanic, French, and Anglophone countries, as well as at contributions made by Mozart’s major nineteenth-century biographers (Ignaz Arnold, Georg von Nissen, Alexandre Oulibicheff, Edward Holmes, Otto Jahn, Ludwig Nohl).  It also studies a representative sample of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary works and visual media – by Goethe, Heribert Rau, Heinrich Smidt, Lotte Reiniger, G. Lowes Dickinson, Karl Hartl – that reference or are inspired by the opera.  Common themes in all areas of reception include the harsh treatment of Schikaneder, and a Mozartian narrative combining a creative peak with fatal physical decline.

This chapter draws on conceptions of gender in Mozart’s time and ours to explore the opera’s representation of women. This aspect of The Magic Flute, including the misogynistic statements of the priests, is now widely regarded as problematic. The opera sets the rule of Sarastro and his brotherhood against the Queen and her entourage, and the focus on this conflict between the sexes has to some degree obscured the opera’s focus on the construction of gender in the characterization of Pamina and the Queen. Gender is performed on stage within an established context and frame of reference. Pamina is a sentimental heroine whose idealized image, abduction, and abandonment prove her moral virtue; the Queen is a dark and vengeful mother who refuses to accept her restricted position. This focus allows us to see how both mother and daughter complicate patriarchal assumptions by raising important questions about gender and power.

While the finales of The Magic Flute owe much to the standard model that Mozart drew upon in the finales of his Da Ponte operas, they also show features not typically seen in opera buffa finales. Three of these features can be clearly seen in the finales of Schikaneder’s earlier Singspiele at the Theater auf der Wieden. They are: the use of feierlich music (often in march style) for ceremonial, quasi-religious or magical scenes; greater attention to sets and set changes in Schikaneder’s lavish productions; and a looser, more episodic approach to the structure of a finale, with sharp changes in musical style that heighten the sense of separation from one section to the next. Though they resemble the finales of Schikaneder’s other Singspiele, Mozart’s Magic Flute finales are more effective, with superior musical invention and more sharply characterized dramatic moments.

Until late in the twentieth century, formal analysis of Mozart’s operatic ensembles (chiefly those of the Da Ponte operas) was heavily skewed towards the invocation of instrumental models, and pre-eminently sonata form. Additionally, the pursuit of “absolute correspondence between the unfolding of music, text and stage-action” (Abbate and Parker) came to seem increasingly suspect. The Magic Flute is a Singspiel, rather than an opera buffa, and its ensembles are complicated by the existence of “ensemble characters” (the Three Ladies and Three Boys) who generally function collectively rather than individually. This chapter offers analyses of the Act 1 and 2 quintets and the Three Boys’ Act 2 terzetto, seeking to destabilize readings that appeal to models such as sonata rondo and reading tonal structures closely against libretto structure. Evidence from Mozart’s autograph informs the concluding discussion of vocal scoring in the Act 2 choruses and the final moments of the work.

The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire figured prominently in Amy Beach’s life. Her friendship with the artist colony’s founder, Marian MacDowell, ensured Beach an open invitation; she held eighteen residencies between 1921 and 1941. The colony offered Beach the perfect environment for her creative work: a direct experience of nature and the uninterrupted solitude of a studio of her own amid a community of creative workers. Beach was at the height of her career during these years. She mentored many of the younger women composers who came to work at the colony and composed much of her best music there. Beach became a devoted supporter of the MacDowell Colony. She organized benefit concerts and spoke passionately on its behalf whenever she had the chance. On her death, she left the rights to her music to the colony, a gift that continues to earn income today.