“Staging The Magic Flute” examines the production history of Mozart’s opera over more than two centuries, from its 1791 premiere to 2019. It focuses especially on productions of The Magic Flute since 1970 and the critical reactions they have provoked, and asks if there can ever be a definitive staging of this iconic work. Productions discussed in detail range from Barrie Kosky’s radical “silent movie” version for the Komische Oper Berlin to August Everding and David McVicar’s long-running fairytale-Enlightenment stagings for (respectively) the Bavarian State Opera and The Royal Opera. Among the many other directors and designers discussed are Marc Chagall, Ingmar Bergman, David Hockney, Peter Sellars, Pierre Audi, Julie Taymor, Peter Stein, and Simon McBurney.

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.

Song served as a primary generative force throughout Amy Beach’s prolific compositional career. Her three major pieces for orchestra alone-Bal Masqué (1893), the “Gaelic” Symphony (1896), and the Piano Concerto (1900)-are no exception. This chapter argues that Beach’s affinity for song not only shaped her approach to large-scale orchestral composition, but also facilitated positive responses to her works well beyond their premieres. Beach’s ultimate success with song-inspired orchestral composition reflected broader trends of the era overshadowed by experimental modernisms.

The Magic Flute was written specifically for the Freihaus Theater auf der Wieden. As such, it is useful to consider the physical aspects and the history of the building as well as some of the other repertory that was performed there around the same time. When we include works that were performed in the Theater in der Leopoldstadt under the direction of Karl Marinelli – Schikaneder’s main rival – we can see that they share some musical and theatrical aspects of The Magic Flute. Plot lines or character types that found favor with audiences were reproduced in various works at both suburban theaters, allowing a faster creative process and resulting in a somewhat formulaic product. This adds to the notion that while The Magic Flute is certainly an exceptional work, it was, nevertheless, significantly influenced by the popular entertainment common in Viennese theaters of the eighteenth century.

When a female Yahoo makes sexual advances to Gulliver in Part IV of the Travels, he is forced to acknowledge that he ‘was a real Yahoo’. This recognition has disturbed readers as much as it appalled Gulliver. Is Swift a misanthropist? Or does he recommend a middle ground between Yahoo and Houyhnhnm? So many people found the last part of Swift’s Travels both unfathomable and distasteful that it was frequently omitted from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century editions, especially those intended for children. Part III suffered the same fate. Neither book seems to fit with Swift’s imaginatively appealing tales of little and large people. Yet it is likely that he conceived all four parts to work as a whole. This chapter argues that rather than being the spot of solid ground onto which the shipwrecked reader can crawl and from there look back over the rest of the text to find it resolves itself into an order that points at one clear meaning, Part IV leaves many readers baffled and discomforted – and that is the point. While animal fables generally end with an explanatory ‘moral’, Swift obliges readers to work through the complexities and conundrums of his text.

This chapter concerns itself with the Sophists’ professional activities. Their professionalism – especially the claim that they were first to teach for pay – has often been used as the only meaningful characteristic to distinguish them from other wisdom experts. When reviewing the evidence for their professional activities, however, a different picture emerges, one in which the Sophists appear to be less exceptional and more embedded in a broader economy of wisdom than has hitherto been realized. The chapter reviews the primary sources and discusses the difficulty of reconstructing the Sophists’ professional lives based on authors who, like Plato, seem hostile and frequently mention the Sophists in invective contexts. By paying attention to the Sophists’ professional activities, we can gain a better understanding of their social position and the cultural legitimacy accorded them by their contemporaries. How we interpret their professional activities can further help shape our understanding of their contribution to Greek philosophy and their intellectual legacy.

This chapter examines the ways in which pre-war drama explored growing fears over major international conflict. Works considered include Du Maurier’s An Englishman’s Home (1909), Zangwill’s The War God (1911) and a number of less well-known plays and comic skits. The chapter contextualises these works in relation to the fraught geopolitical landscape in which they were produced and the wider cultural phenomenon of ‘invasion fiction’. Both critical and public reactions to these productions are also examined. The chapter concludes by exploring how the pre-war plays established the play-book for propagandistic war-time drama as theatre mobilised for the war effort.

Known chiefly from sources related to democratic Athens, the Sophists emerge from the competitive ethos of aristocratic Greek society. The impetus for the Sophistic movement was the transformation of social and political relations within the Greek world following the defeat of Xerxes. These changes were most dramatically felt and best recorded at Athens. The phenomenal wealth of fifth-century Athens increased the number of Athenians aspiring to an aristocratic lifestyle and intensified the competition for social recognition and for preeminence in politics. Verbal dexterity was a key attribute in the pursuit of such standing. Sophists attracted students by promising to impart such skills in the young men of wealthy families. The turmoil of war in the late fifth century encouraged some of those influenced by Sophists to turn toward oligarchic revolution at Athens, tainting the reputation of Sophistic learning, leading to the condemnation of Socrates for his engagement with these self-proclaimed teachers of political virtue and wisdom.