MOZART AS DRAMATIST
41
Manichaean. In Sarastro's realm sin merits neither glamour nor dam–
nation; it is simply checked as inevitably as day follows night:
Die Strahlen der Sonne vertreiben die N acht,
<:ernichten der H euchler erschlichene Macht.
Lying is met by a temporary padlock on the lips, lechery by a beating,
deceit by rendering the rebels impotent. Virtue is attained by an eso–
teric but democratic and hospitable ascent, in which Tamino, Pa–
mina, and even Papageno can all share in various ways. Tamino,
ready at first to fall in love with images, takes the Queen of the Night
at her word, just as the audience does. He learns to doubt, to seek
a higher reality, and to submit to the Ordeals. Pamina learns love,
despair, and freedom from parental despotism. For both of them,
a deeper love is the last step, and they stand together before the Fire
and the Water. Pamina assists Tamino; what the supposedly miso–
gynic Freemasons thought of this, I cannot say, but Mozart made it
the center of his drama. Pamina is by far the fullest person in it,
and her progress, by way of Mozart's greatest aria,
«Ach, ich fuhl's,"
is the most emphatically articulated. (One need only imagine the
opera without her- it could "work," after a fashion-to realize how
valuable her role is.) Through brotherhood man achieves Wisdom,
Virtue, and the Love of God, and brotherhood is not restricted by
sex. Nor by intelligence; Papageno, who is generally unconscious and
afraid, can gain his salvation too if he will keep good cheer and not
lie. The gods are as humble as men. Sarastro suffers gently with his
novices, and all the Priests and Spirits and Armed Men are their
brothers.
Since the underlying conception is so simple and pure, the almost
crazy variety of musical style which Mozart dared bring together can
harmonize as beautifully as the solemn animals of the Peaceable
Kingdom. There is no stress of stylistic contradiction, as there is in
Don Giovanni,
though the elements are in actual fact much more
disparate:
opera seria
arias and
opera buffa
ensembles, panpipe scales
and an Overture with a real fugal theme, Masonic fanfares and a
Lutheran chorale which sounds like Bach, Viennese street-songs and
(as Shaw said) the only music yet written fit for the mouth of God.
All these seem to be subsumed under the particular "Magic Flute
style," the style of Mozart's last months. There is a new serenity, a
