Of all the scholarly books on opera that I've found over the years, Joachim Kaiser's 1984 Who's Who In Mozart's Operas: from Alfonso to Zerlina is by far one of the most interesting. It's a mini encyclopedia of every character from all of Mozart's major operas, featuring descriptions and analyses of every single character: small ones for the minor characters, longer and deeper discussions for the major characters. While other books I've read have offered character analysis within their discussions of the operas as a whole, or else have been devoted to a specific subset of characters, no other book has been as exclusively devoted to character analysis, or as willing to examine even the most minor characters.
Not least among Kaiser's analyses are his profiles of the characters from Die Zauberflöte In his preface, he makes it clear that in no way does he view these characters as simple fairy-tale archetypes. In some ways, he argues, they're even more complex and difficult to analyze than the more "realistic" characters of Le Nozze di Figaro or Cosí Fan Tutte. Mozart was not only one of the greatest composers, but one of the greatest musical dramatists who ever lived. His music bestows depth and humanity on every character in even the most fantastical of operas.
First, Second and Third Boy
Unlike the Three Ladies, who each have enough individuality that each gets her own entry in this book, the Three Boys are so unified that Kaiser treats them as a single presence. The first thing he addresses is the fact that the Boys are introduced as apparent allies to the Queen of the Night, as the Ladies instruct Tamino and Papageno to follow them. Yet their idealism and the lofty tone of their music immediately seems to align them more with Sarastro, and in Act II, they explicitly act in Sarastro's name. How to explain this discrepancy? Are they "neutral" beings willing to serve either side? Are they initially servants of the Queen, but drawn by their own innocence and purity to switch their allegiance to Sarastro? Do they secretly serve Sarastro all along without the Queen or the Ladies knowing it? Kaiser doesn't provide a single answer, but writes that whichever answer is chosen, their "realignment" can be made convincing. He then devotes more space to discussing whether it's better for real young boys to sing the roles or for women to take them. After all, young boys' voices are less clear and resonant than women's. But Mozart composed the parts for boys' voices and must have done so for a reason. Kaiser argues that ultimately, their pre-adolescence matters most when they thwart the suicide attempts of Pamina and Papageno. Only children, who have never known sexuality or the torments of romantic love, can offer the kindly yet detached pity and advice needed to lift Pamina and Papageno from the depths of their despair. Three sensuous women's voices spoil that particular effect.
First Lady
As the vocal leader of the Three Ladies with the dominant soprano voice, the First Lady would love to be alone onstage if only she could, according to Kaiser. Her high, glittering voice gives her more solo cantilenas than either of her two partners have, and she tries to assert her authority over them by always speaking first and by being the first to insist on staying alone with the unconscious Tamino. Unfortunately, she can never escape from the other two, nor command them the way she wishes she could. Meanwhile, Kaiser writes, she comes across as charming, frivolous, playful, catty, egotistical, and, despite living in a fantasy world presumably far from Austria, quintessentially Viennese.
Second Lady
The least distinctive of the Ladies, always overshadowed by the other two. Nonetheless, the trio would be incomplete without her, and Kaiser insists that she must be reliable and charming onstage.
Third Lady
With her deepest voice of the trio, Kaiser interprets the Third Lady as the most serious of the three. Musically, her role serves as the trio's foundation, and in Act I she also purveys much important information. She's the one who informs Tamino that the Ladies rescued him from the snake, she gives him Pamina's all-important portrait, and she relates most of the story of Pamina's kidnapping. Kaiser describes her as "Subordinate only to the Queen of the Night, certainly not to the First Lady."
Monostatos
Kaiser doesn't try to resolve the controversy surrounding Monostatos. He seems opposed both to writing the character off as a simple racist caricature, either purely depraved or purely comic, and to viewing him as a tragic victim. He argues that Monostatos isn't without sympathy. It's only natural to feel for him as he laments that he's denied love just because he's black, and while his aria's "careening," "flurried," "gabbling" music has a comic quality, it also captures the frenzy of his longing. Yet this can't excuse his sadistic, predatory behavior, or the pleasure he takes in mocking and tormenting his victims, or his easy shift of loyalty from Sarastro to the Queen. Kaiser argues that the narrative doesn't condemn Monostatos for desiring Pamina, but for the vicious methods he uses to try to claim her. (As we'll see, Kaiser applies a similar view of "sympathetic motives, villainous methods" to the Queen too.) Kaiser then highlights a mysterious stage direction in the libretto: that Monostatos's aria be performed "piano, as though the music were far off." What does this mean? After dismissing one critic's suggestion that the aria is a dream of Pamina's and shows her repressed desire for Monostatos, Kaiser offers several ideas. One, that Monostatos is just being cautious so as not to wake Pamina; two, that he's quietly grasping at an ideal of love which he knows is out of his reach; three, that he's timid and almost ashamed as his forbidden desire defeats his conscience. Either way, Kaiser argues that a purely comic or depraved figure would sing with "clamorous drollery" instead, and that Monostatos's frenzied yet hushed tones mark him as a human being.
Pamina
From the beginning, Kaiser makes his special affection and sympathy for Pamina very clear. He describes her as the opera's most human character and as the character who deserves the most compassion. He writes that in the best performances of the opera, while Tamino might be the story's "linchpin," Pamina comes across as the true central character. Of course this sympathy is partly because she suffers so much. Kaiser speculates that her character might have been partly inspired by Shakespeare's Ophelia, since both are innocent young maidens made to suffer for reasons they don't understand and driven to desperation by the loss of both a parent and a lover. But he insists that she's much more than just "a cry-baby who makes other people cry"; other factors make her interesting too. For one, there's her staunch self-respect, as she rejects Monostatos's advances even at risk to her own life. Then there's her easy ability to love and make friends, which shows not just a warm, generous spirit, but intellectual insight into others. In Act I, for example, even at her most desperate to go back to her mother, she never views Sarastro as an enemy, but respects him and aligns herself with his values from the start. And when she befriends Papageno, she adopts the peasant-like idioms of his music to the manner born. But above all, Kaiser admires her for the ardent, spontaneous, unrestrained nature of her love. This makes her vulnerable to heartbreak, but it gives her strength and courage too, as she initiates all her duets with Tamino, as well as her "Mann und Weib" duet with Papageno, and as she ultimately leads Tamino through the fire and water. This is evident enough in the text, Kaiser writes, but Mozart's music – the vivid G-minor anguish of "Ach, ich fühl's" and of her suicide attempt, and the sublime joy of "Tamino mein! O welche ein Glück!" – reveals how truly intense and human her feelings are. A heroine who loves the way Pamina does, writes Kaiser, is unsuited to be "the passive object of masculine rituals," so it's no wonder that she transcends that role in the end.
Papagena
It's hard to view Papagena as anything but a simple object of wish-fulfillment for Papageno, writes Kaiser. She's first mentioned not as a real person, but as Papageno's fantasy of his ideal bride, and eventually that fantasy takes physical shape. While disguised as the Old Woman she shows some individual personality, teasing and wheedling Papageno into into agreeing to marry her, but she does this less of her own will than as part of the priests' tests. As her true self, she only sings one blissful duet with Papageno, in which she generally just echoes his words. Even as Papageno's female counterpart, Kaiser argues that she's only really shown to mirror one aspect of his personality, his good humor. And yet, Kaiser points out, she does hint at a spirit of her own by initiating one portion of the duet ("Es ist das höchste der Gefühle..."), and if she lacks her partner's complexity, it's because she doesn't need it. She embodies "the pure idea of earthly, physical happiness," and thanks to Mozart, she does it sublimely. This makes her invaluable in an opera where the highest aim (argues Kaiser) is the celebration of happiness.
Papageno
After a quick overview of the most likely influences on Papageno's character (the traditional Austrian puppet character of Kasperl, for example, and Sancho Panza in Don Quixote), Kaiser ponders why Papageno makes us laugh. After all, he spends most of the story being terrified, dragged unwillingly through dangers and trials, and punished too harshly for common, harmless foibles. But Kaiser argues that to take his plight too seriously is to over-sentimentalize him. After all, cowardly though he is, Papageno is quick-witted and resilient too. He's just as easy to cheer up as he is to frighten, and quick to forget all unhappiness whenever some new pleasure appears. This is the advantage he gains from living moment-to-moment, with so little sense of past or memory that he doesn't even know who his parents were, and from caring chiefly about the physical world, not ideals. As "the coarsely realistic counterpart" to Tamino's idealism, he makes a compelling case for preferring the simple pleasures of life rather than the two noble lovers' hard journeys of personal growth. He asserts the right of humankind to be unheroic and afraid of danger, to enjoy good food and drink, and to take life easy as a whole. Comic servant characters have done this for centuries, in theaters all over the world. Papageno's particular brand of folksy charm makes him a distinctly Austrian figure, however (compared, say, to the elegant cunning of an Italian Harlequin), and Kaiser argues that he should preferably be played by an Austrian vernacular actor. Though he often serves as a comic example of how not to behave, in contrast to Tamino and Pamina's status as virtuous role models, the narrative is ultimately on his side as he wins his Papagena. Kaiser writes that he can imagine the heroes feeling slightly envious of the feathery couple's simple, easy joy.
The Queen of the Night
Kaiser writes that the spectacular coloratura and fiendish difficulty of the Queen's music is almost unfortunate, because the role is too easily reduced to a "coloratura robot," and her rich humanity is too easily overlooked. His sympathy for the Queen quickly becomes clear. He emphatically rejects the popular view of her as a cold-blooded, scheming villainess, who only values her daughter as a pawn in her plot to seize Sarastro's power. Comparing the music of her Act I aria to other melancholy Mozart compositions that were meant to be fully sincere (not least to Pamina's heartbreaking "Ach, ich fühl's," which is in the same key of G minor), he argues against the common claim that her lament over Pamina's kidnapping is artifice to manipulate Tamino. In his firm opinion, the Queen loves her daughter and her anguish at losing her is genuine. Nor does Kaiser see the excessive pride in her that Sarastro does/ Sarastro is equally proud, but no one holds it against him because he's a man. The Queen, Kaiser insists, is perhaps the first proto-feminist in opera, naturally and justifiably outraged at being denied power by her husband and Sarastro, and all the more naturally furious at having her beloved child stolen from her too. When she crosses the line into unjustified behavior, ordering Pamina to murder Sarastro under threat of disownment, it's because she's distraught by her defender Tamino's betrayal and by her daughter's reluctance to take sides. This, Kaiser argues, drives her to ferociously reject all the confines of womanhood, even the natural ties of motherhood if Pamina should prove disloyal. At worst, he views her as an extremist whose motives are sympathetic, but whose "seething fanaticism" carries her methods too far. He believes this was how Mozart intended her to be viewed as well. It just requires a soprano who sings with real passion and not empty vocal glitter to make the audience feel the same way.
Sarastro
For a leader so loved and revered within the opera, Sarastro has been widely disparaged by real-world critics. Not only for his misogyny and for owning slaves, but as "a boring, puritanical windbag," too much of a "divine sage" for any audience to engage with him. Yet as Kaiser points out, critics who praise Sarastro often do him an injustice too, as they likewise reduce him to "a sublime principle on two legs." As with the Queen, Kaiser insists that Sarastro's role deserves better than these oversimplified readings and argues that the high priest is, in fact, a complex human being. It's clear that Mozart and Schikaneder meant him to be "the picture of a positive, benevolent ruler": his followers adore him and he preaches the highest ideals of an enlightened freemason. Yet we can't deny that he's often severe too, as he sentences Monostatos to a beating, and as he sternly separates the lovers from each other, and Pamina from her beloved mother, for the greater good. Nor does he ever question the rightness of his own absolute power, nor of the sexist patriarchal traditions that granted it to him. Yet he tempers his sternness with compassion and warmth, as we see when he consoles Pamina and assures her of his belief in forgiveness and mercy. He also shows a surprisingly wicked sense of humor in the Act I finale, when he seemingly prepares to reward Monostatos only to punish him instead, and then sarcastically replies to his horror as if it were thanks. Contrary to stage tradition, Kaiser also suggests that Sarastro should be portrayed as a young man, more "prince" than "king." His supreme power is newly inherited from Pamina's father, after all, and in Act I his stern shutdowns of Pamina's pining for her mother arguably sound more like youthful impatience than old-age wisdom. It's true that as a fairy tale character, he's less complex than some of Mozart's more realistic portraits of men in power (e.g. Figaro's Count Almaviva). But compared to his predecessors in the world of operatic fantasy, the one-dimensional kings of opera seria, Kaiser insists that Sarastro is very much a flesh-and-blood person.
Speaker
Even though the Speaker's role consists of just one scene (Kaiser briefly mentions the debate about whether or not he's meant to be the same character as the First Priest in Act II, but only analyzes his Act I exchange with Tamino), his importance is profound. As Kaiser writes, he stands like a signpost to show Tamino a new world, and he fills that role well. In their musical dialogue, almost Wagnerian in its free-flowing nature, he emerges as mystical yet intellectually incisive as he analyzes Tamino's words and cuts through his misguided beliefs. He seems trustworthy, yet mysterious and vaguely sinister – and all too human when he mocks all women in his contempt for the Queen. He alternately respects, disturbs, threatens, comforts and confuses Tamino, all in the span of a few minutes, and with Mozart's music vividly painting each change of tone. It's little wonder that his brief scene has been so highly praised for its effectiveness over the years, or that it changes the opera's entire trajectory.
Tamino
Kaiser insightfully observes that there are two Taminos in the opera. First there's the less mature yet more relatable Tamino of Act I, who sings both of the character's two arias and is capable of fear, angry outbursts, poignant doubt, and despair. Then there's the stalwart Tamino of Act II, who has fully embraced Sarastro's values as his own, and who never wavers in his courage or his convictions, and yet sings no more arias and has arguably become less human in becoming "a man." Even in Act I, however, Kaiser observes that Tamino isn't entirely naive or unprepared for his adventures. He's already heard many stories of the Queen of the Night from his father, which probably explains why he so easily embraces the role of her daughter's rescuer and bridegroom. He has a strong visual sense, as we see both in his love at first sight for Pamina and in the aura of virtue and dignity he sees in the very architecture of Sarastro's temples. While each new plot twist befuddles him at first, especially the revelation that Sarastro is no villain, his confusion always passes quickly and he adapts himself well to each new circumstance. As a whole, this analysis seems to view Tamino as almost too "perfect" to be likable, especially in Act II. Not that he exactly views him as such: Tamino is still a Mozart character, after all, and Kaiser takes particular time to praise the warm, gentle depiction of blossoming love within the aria "Dies Bildnis." But Kaiser seems especially hard-pressed to sympathize with Tamino when he so staunchly obeys the priests' command of silence even when it causes agony to Pamina. Once again, he points out that in both of the two lovers' key romantic moments, their first meeting and their reunion before the final trials, Pamina proves to be the more spontaneous and passionate of the two by singing first. He writes that while Tamino definitely becomes "a proper Singspiel hero," it's no wonder that Goethe, in his unfinished sequel to the opera, had the lovers' marriage begin with "a number of complications."
Of course some of Kaiser's interpretations of the characters are subjective, though they're all based in close readings fo the score and libretto. In fact some of his views are downright non-traditional. It's very rare to see a production of the opera portray Sarastro as a young man, or give the Three Ladies individual personalities, or above all give the Queen as much sympathy as he gives her. Kaiser's implication that both the Queen and Monostatos should be viewed as sympathetic in their motives but too extreme in their methods is an especially rare interpretation. But the deep, careful thought that goes into each analysis, with both musical and textual support for every argument, is truly impressive. This unique book achieves its goal of celebrating Mozart-as-dramatist with flying colors. No one who reads it will ever again view the characters of The Magic Flute, or of Mozart's other operas for that matter, as simple theatrical archetypes with pretty music to sing.
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