Is there any other opera on earth quite like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder’s The Magic Flute?
It’s a fairytale that’s also an Enlightenment allegory. It begins with a man nearly being eaten by a serpent, it ends with a Masonic initiation. In between there are scenes ranging from slapstick to sublime meditation. There are ideals about progression and brotherhood, and yet the opera makes misogynistic claims and incorporates a blackface archetype, although more modern iterations remove the sexism and racism. No other opera is both common holiday faire for children and a record of Masonic philosophy. The Magic Flute exists outside boundaries and continues to fascinate us to this day in a way very few theatre pieces do.
On the surface level, Flute is a fairytale about a prince’s adventure. Underneath the hood the opera is full of mystery and philosophy. There has been a lot said about how the opera weaves Enlightenment concepts into its fairytale, while also being written for broad public enjoyment. For example, it is set in Ancient Egypt, capitalizing on the Enlightenment’s archaeological sciences and the 18th century public’s obsession with Egyptian art. Yet little scholarship appears to exist on how these two ideals might affect the work’s treatment of astronomy. Cosmic metaphors are all over the opera. The plot consists of a power struggle between a Queen of the Night and Sarastro, a priest of the sun; the conflict resolves when their respective successors unite. The piece can be read as an allegory for a solar eclipse, an event which was studied throughout the Enlightenment, experiencing a reputation flip during the time from mythological menace to scientific darling. What might The Magic Flute reveal about astronomy for the common people- and, in turn, what might it reveal about the cosmos it speaks of?
Throughout 1790, one year before The Magic Flute’s composition, there was an increased period of solar eclipse activity, with twice as many eclipses as the yearly average. 1791 meanwhile had two eclipses in particular that bookended the opera’s composition: an annular solar eclipse on April 3rd and a lunar eclipse on October 12th. James Ferguson’s Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, And Made Easy to Those Who Have Not Studied Mathematics, a popular 1756 astronomy guide, notes and accurately predicts both of these instances; while the April 3rd eclipse was not visible from Europe, it was discussed by the Western world as it was witnessed by the United States of America. Interestingly, a total solar eclipse occurred on September 27, three days before the opera’s premiere, but contemporary information on it was scarce as it was largely over the Southern Pacific Ocean. This increased activity would have been noted by Enlightenment scholars at the time of Flute’s composition. It would also be seen as a relative novelty; Information on where and when eclipses would happen was not widely available before the advancements in both scientific process and public accessibility that the Enlightenment brought.
Because of widely available books such as Ferguson’s Astronomy Explained, as well as more detailed guides for astronomers specifically like John Flamsteed’s Atlas Coelestis (1729), the public became increasingly aware of cosmic phenomena, and more references to them appeared in art for the common audiences. One such example concerns an anonymous British political cartoon portraying General Wellington as the moon blotting out King George IV’s sun. The title, An eclipse lately discovered in the Georgium Sidus, and quite unexpected by any of the Astronomers, pays homage to the then-recent discovery of the planet Uranus, which had initially been named after King George III. Even in common art such as political cartoons, the 18th century public’s fascination with science leaked in, and solar eclipses—as well as other celestial phenomena—became a metaphorical shorthand to communicate an idea to others.
So with the backbone of astronomy’s place in 18th century common art established, what exactly is going on inside of the opera?
To summarize The Magic Flute quickly, it is a fairytale about spiritual enlightenment. Prince Tamino, saved from a hungry serpent by the Queen of the Night’s ladies-in-waiting, is tasked with saving the Queen’s daughter Pamina from the supposedly evil sun priest Sarastro. To aid him, he is given the titular flute, the Queen’s birdcatcher Papageno, and three mysterious genii who act as spiritual guides. Tamino soon discovers the Queen was the true villain and that Sarastro is trying to help Pamina escape her mother’s influence (although much can be said regarding how good Sarastro truly is). Trials for the main characters ensue, ranging from Masonic initiation trials to dealing with Sarastro’s lustful slave Monostatos; in the end, the Queen and Monostatos are defeated, and Tamino and Pamina are fully initiated into Sarastro’s brotherhood as the successors to Sarastro and the Queen’s positions respectively.
Ties to eclipses can be traced to the first scene. The serpent’s attempt to eat Tamino, the Sun’s next incarnation, draws it in line with several ancient eclipse myths— most predominantly an ancient Chinese belief of a sun-eating dragon, and of the Egyptian serpent god Apep who attempted to devour the sun and plunge the world into eternal darkness. Stories of otherworldly creatures attempting to eat the sun are a common theme throughout humankind’s earliest explanations of the solar eclipse, although special attention must be paid to these two instances. Not only is Tamino specified in the original libretto to be of Asian heritage, linking him to Ancient China through the exoticized worldview of an 18th century White European, but The Magic Flute itself is set in Ancient Egypt and contains other references to Egyptian mythology within.
Furthermore, the Queen of the Night’s realm where the serpent dwells represents chaos and base desire. The Queen’s ladies lust over Tamino’s unconscious body. Papageno is ultimately good but still ruled by his gut instinct. The stories of creatures swallowing the sun serve as representations of chaos, particularly in the case of Apep. Apep also personifies darkness and is in conflict with the sun’s personification- as the Queen of the Night is. Not only does the serpent foreshadow the Queen’s true nature, but it also starts the opera within the earliest human reactions to the eclipse- and from a position of terror at the unexplained, be that position as dubiously exoticizing as it is.
There are two pairs of sun-and-moon juxtaposition within the opera. The first is Sarastro and the Queen of the Night, who are mirror representations of one another. On the surface everything about them is opposite. She is fiery and emotional, speaking only in Baroque-styled arias, while he is almost coldly logical in his actions and sings simple hymns. They dislike one another so greatly they never appear onstage at the same time. Yet they parallel each other nearly perfectly. The lowest note Sarastro sings is exactly four octaves under the highest note the Queen sings. They both are introduced the same way—through their underlings heralding their arrival- and their narrative functions are both to send Tamino and Pamina on various tasks. Tamino’s challenges given to him by Sarastro in the second act mirror the Queen’s instruction to Pamina to kill for her. It is almost like they are two halves of a greater whole… a whole that will never combine because of all the animosity between them.
Tamino and Pamina are a different story. They may inherit the positions of masculine sun and feminine moon from the two above but not their animosity. They fall in love even before they meet. The only instance in the opera in which there is some real doubt whether the two will succeed comes in the form of a miscommunication in the second act that temporarily drives them apart. Furthermore, the magical flute symbolizes their bond. Every instance in which it demonstrates its magic is when Tamino and Pamina are spiritually united, and it saves Tamino and Pamina in the final trial when she instructs him to play it- an act of teamwork. It also should be noted that in the original libretto, Pamina states her late father carved the flute in a “magic hour” of storms and darkness; in an oft-omitted backstory Pamina’s father was both the Queen’s husband and Sarastro’s friend and therefore the only thing that could tie them together.
Within the framework that Flute is an astronomy opera, these two pairings become the pre- and post-Enlightenment models of solar eclipses. Sarastro and the Queen deliberately position themselves as diametrically opposed. A union between these two only leads to disarray and fear, and they both capitalize on their differences despite having similar textual functions. But Tamino and Pamina work in harmony—their union is seen not as something unholy, but as a wonder of the enlightened world. In turn, eclipses underwent a reputation change during the Enlightenment as they became widely predictable and understood. Once a bad omen, eclipses became events of goodwill. They were eagerly anticipated in newspapers. During the American Revolutionary War, British forces temporarily paused their fray to allow a group of scientists to study the 1780 eclipse unharmed. Because time was invested into understanding these celestial phenomena, the world’s perspective on them changed from despair to joy. Ultimately, the opera uses this perspective flip to say that understanding and curiosity is how bridges are mended, and the world becomes kinder.
The notion of Flute as astronomical allegory is backed up by early set designs for the opera. Perhaps one of the most famous visuals created for The Magic Flute– or, indeed, any opera- is the Hall of Stars from Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s set designs for an 1816 mounting of the piece. Depicting the Queen of the Night atop a crescent moon, the piece evokes a domed structure through the way a grid of stars bends towards the top of the image. This grid of perfectly-aligned stars visually resembles the grids in works such as the Atlas Coelestis, complete with the same curvature towards a central circle.
Visual nods to astronomy continue two years later in Simon Quaglio’s set designs for a mounting of the opera in Munich. Most notably there is his interpretation of Sarastro’s temple. Quaglio depicts a sun surrounded by a strip of Zodiac illustrations, with the same circular grid pattern of the star maps around it; this time constituted by concentric symbols and the Sun’s rays. The Zodiac strip not only corresponds to the Zodiac belt of constellations but even roughly matches its angle to Earth with its perpendicularity to the set’s structure.
While these set designs were not created by Mozart or Schikaneder, they do show an awareness of the opera’s astronomical elements, and their attention to detail suggests that some level of scientific accuracy was encouraged in early production dramaturgy.
So, with all that said, what can the presence of astronomy in The Magic Flute change how we see the opera, and science in art in general? The way the opera utilizes celestial motifs reveals how the opera treats the Enlightenment as a whole. The eclipse becomes a metaphor for the way that the Enlightenment believed seeking knowledge and truth would brighten the world. It also makes The Magic Flute self-demonstrating by investing in the scientific discovery it promotes. Mozart’s final opera becomes easier to grasp when understood through this lens, and more accessible in turn to new audiences. Finally, this presence of science in art reveals how much studying the universe around us enriches our creations, and how interconnected science and art truly are.
At a time when both STEM and arts institutions are at risk of being defunded by our federal government, remembering how much both groups inspire one another is important to strengthen our allyship. Astronomers themselves have honored The Magic Flute through their work. Scientists have named three asteroids- 471 Papagena, 539 Pamina, and 3026 Sarastro after the opera’s characters. The Queen of the Night’s Act II aria was sent into space on the golden records included on the Voyager spacecrafts, where it remains a part of the farthest human-made object in our galaxy. Mozart was inspired by science and the skies above him—and in turn, science was inspired by him, and the skies above will now carry evidence of this opera long after we are gone. Art and science are a love story and always have been- and perhaps, through looking to the stars above us, the art around us here on Earth can become a little clearer.
