The Magic Flute

Synopsis

"The story, which has been updated to a World War I setting, follows the structure of the original opera libretto very closely while stripping away all the Freemasonry references. All of Mozart's music for the opera is retained in the film. Tamino is still sent by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina after Sarastro has apparently kidnapped her, as in the original. His sidekick is still the comical Papageno, a birdcatcher in the original opera, but a man who uses underground pigeons to check for poison gas in the Branagh film. As in the original work, spoken dialogue is interspersed with the arias, duets, and choruses. There are some other updates to the plot mirroring the WW I setting, though, as well as some changes. Tamino is menaced at the beginning, not by a dragon, but by poison gas. The Three Ladies who serve as attendants to the Queen of the Night are turned into hospital nurses and the Queen herself is made more tragic and less purely evil (Upon climbing the wall of Sarastro's dwelling and seeing through the window that Tamino and Pamina have already been married, she commits suicide by deliberately letting herself fall after accidentally losing her footing). Sarastro in this version is a man in charge of a field hospital, not a high priest, and his ultimate wish is world peace, not simply the triumph of good over evil. (He is also Pamina's father, as in the 1975 Ingmar Bergman film version of the opera, and the Queen of the Night is apparently his estranged ex-wife, although this is never directly stated.) Sarastro desperately tries to save the Queen's life before she falls, unlike the character in the original opera, and, just as in the Bergman film, Monostatos commits suicide at the end. Papageno does not wear a feather filled costume as in the original stage work, nor does his sweetheart Papagena, though the pair are frequently accompanied by birds – especially chickens – and their lines are filled with clever bird references. The "water trial" that Tamino must endure occurs when the trench that he and Pamina are in becomes flooded and the trial of fire is a walk through a battlefield in which bombs are constantly exploding." [Wikipedia]

Genre

Historical

Released

2006

Location

Europe

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