Mozart's final Singspiel, like many of his previous works, features paired characters with opposite or complimentary attributes. The Queen of the Night, and her opponent Sarastro, the ruler of all that is light and good, are the most prominent pair (and highest in the social hierarchy); Pamina and her lover Tamino represent idealized female and male youth, and unite at the opera’s end as virtue and peace are established; Papageno the birdcatcher seeks his mate, as do the birds. These paired characters relate to one another in the horizontal direction of attraction or repulsion, and meet as peers; they also relate in a generational, vertical direction: as parents and children, whether
biological or ideological. Familial interactions, especially the parent/child relationship, are a touchstone for the characters’ view on morality, duty, and happiness.
Idomeneo, an earlier opera seria (1781), also examines the family relationship as a view on the characters’ feelings and motivations. Using a classic mythological theme, the story follows the king Idomeneo through the tragic predicament of being honor-bound to kill his son. Idamante, the son, is saved through the literal deus (ex machina) of Poseidon, who permits Idomeneo to be released from his oath in exchange for the king’s abdication in favor of his son and Ilia, the Greek princess who loves Idamante. As in Flute, the parental generation must yield to their sons and daughters, and harmony between peoples and gods is achieved through love of many different types. The tested relationship of father and son in Idomeneo is a focal point, and conflicts between love and duty affect nearly all the characters.
This essay will examine how the various characters in Mozart’s operatic world interact with their families and the nature of this relationship. In the first half, I will examine four characters in Die Zauberflöte who directly address filial relationships: Tamino, Papageno, the Queen, and Pamina. In addition, Sarastro also contributes valuable information on how the filial relationship is seen by Mozart’s characters, and expectations for filial interactions. I will address each of these five in the above order, as they are presented during the opera. In the second part, the valuable insights from characters in Idomeneo – Idomeneo, Idamante, and Ilia - are added to the “big picture.”
Die Zauberflöte
Tamino, the first character to speak in the opera, is a prince. We know this from his own speech to Papageno: “Mein Vater ist Fürst, der über viele Länder und Menschen herrscht; darum nennt man mich Prinz.” (My father rules over many lands and peoples, and so I am called Prince.) His relationship to his father defines his identity, and like Don Giovanni, his inherited status makes him a member of the noble ruling class. Unlike the Don, however, Tamino seeks right and truth, and shows remarkable emotional restraint and concern for morality and duty. In contrast to this distinguished youth, Papageno, the humble birdcatcher, does not know his parents or origins. His orphan background leaves him unconcerned and unattached, though as we will see, he desires to create a family for himself. Papageno’s lack of a past grounds him firmly in the present, where food and wine – basic goods – suffice for his happiness. It is notable that Tamino does not explicitly state a desire for family, though his relationship with Pamina will surely encompass family life (i.e., children). Meaningful long term relationships with a female mate are the goal for both young men. As these relationships develop over the course of the opera, however, we discover that both Tamino and Papageno rate them below a higher good. For Tamino, this is a philosophical statement writ large: his commitment to duty, obedience, honor, and truth outweighs the attraction of female companionship. For Papageno, the higher good is much less theoretical: his life (and implied, continued enjoyment of food and wine) trumps his need for a mate. This inability to risk present comfort for the pursuit of a higher goal could derail Papageno’s quest for fulfillment; Sarastro and his brotherhood gently ignore Papageno’s weakness, though, and allow him to unite with his soulmate Papagena.
The beautiful subject and reward of Tamino’s heroic rescue plot is Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night. Like Tamino, we are first introduced to her in the role of child, and she is seen to be both beautiful and of royal blood. Unlike the Prince, however, Pamina herself does not appear to us until the eleventh scene of Act I. Our first acquaintance with her is through her portrait, given to Tamino by the agents of the Queen, and when Tamino is met by the Queen herself[1], Pamina’s story is elaborated by her mother. Pamina is placed as an object, a pawn in the war between the Queen and Sarastro, and weak like her mother (whose help was not enough to save Pamina), but ultimately this frail, beautiful creature is also a reward. Her political use will continue when the Queen has power over her again. As a powerless female object, Pamina could easily be a simple two-dimensional character. Instead, she is the equal of the Countess in her grace, virtue, and intelligence, and combines these characters with a naïve wisdom which the gods, through Sarastro, finally reward.
As a daughter, Pamina is conflicted in her devotion to both humanistic and humane ideals and her mother. When the Queen commands her to kill Sarastro with a dagger or be disowned, the challenge Pamina faces is manifold. To kill Sarastro entails back-stabbing, a disservice to the dignity even she respects, or facing her victim and allowing him to recognize her and her crime, something which takes the bravado and conviction of a Don Giovanni. To be disowned from her mother, “severing the bonds of nature,” is to cut off Pamina’s support system and the identity which she derives from her mother’s blood and social standing. Pamina’s conflicts are ultimately not resolved through her own choice between the options at hand, but rather by an outside agency (Sarastro) offering her a different choice. Through his “enlightening,” she begins to see the deceptions her mother is perpetuating and thus her separation from the Queen becomes more voluntary. By the end of the opera, Pamina is no longer concerned with her mother as she pursues love and truth elsewhere. She is transformed from a victim and a pawn (identities forced on her by her mother) into a free agent and a queen in her own right, but she is no longer a daughter or a princess; her previous identity and support structure through the Queen have indeed been taken from her by her moral decision.
The missing role among these four characters is that of a father. Both Tamino and Pamina have royal fathers, but neither is present, and Pamina’s is explicitly stated in the libretto as dead. As an orphan and the child of a widow, Pamina lacks the support and social connections which Tamino has through his father, and the loss of her father colors her relationship with her mother. More importantly, Sarastro is an obvious stand-in for this father, having received the seven-fold disk of the sun which represents the father’s power (and the complement to the Queen’s power of Night), and supplanted the queen’s parental role by “abducting” Pamina. Through his gift of the throne, Sarastro returns these noble youths to the status they lack through their fathers’ absence and creates a new identity for them as they assume their new roles as king and queen. Sarastro also fills the paternal role through his advice and guidance to both Tamino and Pamina as they are enlightened away from their previous roles and families. This advice is essential to understanding the contradictions and wisdom in Mozart’s views on family.
Sarastro’s first words to Pamina deal with guidance and who should give it: a man, not her foolish and proud mother. He does not specifically name himself as this guide and guardian, though his actions of bringing her to the temple imply this; instead, he allows her to see that he is wise, unbiased, and most of all, acting in her best interests. Sarastro guides both Tamino and Pamina by example in this way, teaching them the value of forgiveness, and the love of the brotherhood – a love prescribed for Tamino and Pamina in their dealings with all people and each other, the highest form of love, agape. These values, combined with the hard lesson that one’s parents are not always morally right or wise, are valuable to us as we see Pamina and Tamino becoming an Enlightenment woman and man.
Pamina learns Sarastro’s difficult lessons well and severs ties with her mother emotionally and literally. Ultimately, however, as she and Tamino walk through the trials, Pamina is not in fact guided by a man: she and the man she loves guide each other. This can be seen as contradicting Sarastro’s advice, or expanding it. As we will see with Idomeneo, the wisdom or virtue of youth is allowed to supersede the wisdom of age in the course of perfecting it. This theme of the father’s abdication in favor of the son appears in both Idomeneo and Zauberflöte, with one key difference: for the later opera, Mozart (through Sarastro) specified that the innocence of both the young lovers be rewarded. Pamina, unlike Ilia, is placed on a level footing with Tamino as new ruler. Sarastro’s vision for Pamina and Tamino makes good use of their strong partnership and agape – virtues essential to all familial relationships – and allows them to fulfill their destiny as complementary and equal rulers.
Idomeneo
Mozart’s first great masterpiece (Starobinski 2002) deals with the confrontation of a man’s choice and his moral structure, as the king Idomeneo is faced with the consequences of a vow to Neptune which will force him to sacrifice his own son, Idamante. Here we have the relationship of a father and son both present on stage and both dealing with the conflict between family and moral good. The polarizing presence and earthly power of Idomeneo contrasts with his own mild and somewhat helpless personality: in the sources Mozart used (but not reflected in the opera), Idomeneo loves Ilia, the captive who loves his son, but does not impose his will over that of his son, and his vow to Neptune surprises him and renders him hopelessly torn between two unpleasant outcomes. He is a king of men but not a king in his own castle, as both his son and the god threaten his rights to Ilia and succession (Schroeder 1999). Neptune lifts the curse because of the love and virtue shown by Idamante, and Idomeneo does lose both Ilia and his throne through the god’s pronouncement.
Idamante is both a free agent and a pawn in his relationships with his father and others. Faced early in the opera with the rumor of his father’s death (and thus his own accession), he is glad to see Idomeneo return. No doubt Idamante does not wish to become king under such sad circumstances. Idomeneo’s attempt to send him out of danger with Elettra is beyond Idamante’s power to resist, but Idamante also offers himself as willing sacrifice to the god once he is aware of his father’s vow. Idamante is seen as a pious, passionate, and generous young man in his dealings with Elettra, Ilia, Idomeneo, and Nettuno, all of whom place conflicting demands on his attention and life itself. Though he offers his own blood to the god, his love (returned by Ilia) moves the god to forgive Idomeneo’s vow and offer Idamante the throne. Here the sins of the father are redeemed by the virtue of the son.
Ilia, the Trojan princess held captive in Idomeneo’s court, shares the respect for her captor which Pamina feels for Sarastro (though her captor is a much more human and somewhat less enigmatic man – any presumed attraction between Sarastro and Pamina is that, presumed, as opposed to the factual basis of Fenelon, one of Mozart’s sources). Her relationships with father and family are severed in her geographic exile as well as her growing emotional detachment from them. Ilia, though mourning her family (Padre, germani, addio), is growing more and more involved in the substitute family of Idomeneo and Idamante, even to the point of offering her life for that of Idamante. Like Pamina, Ilia is seemingly able to put her family completely out of mind as she assumes a new throne. Again the adoption of a new life without regret for one’s birth family seems strange and cold, but Mozart seems to be stressing to us the priority of the newly formed family in marriage over the family into which one is born. Pamina, Ilia, and the princes they marry must all leave father and mother, join to one another and become “one flesh.”
Mozart’s own relationship with his father is well-documented, through the artifacts of an eighteenth-century life in letters. Leopold’s foundational influence and conflicts with Mozart are frequently discussed, and the stress (both in emphasis and dramatic connotation) on the filial relationship in Mozart’s operas is hardly coincidental. Zauberflöte and Idomeneo show us through didactic and dialogic speech that Mozart held the relationship of parent and child in high regard, and considered this to be both a dangerous and highly rewarding challenge. Idomeneo was written shortly after Mozart returned to Salzburg, after the death of his mother, and during the same period when he met his future wife Constanze (Schroeder 1999). In his own choice of a bride, Mozart faced a similar challenge to that of Pamina or Ilia – he had to leave Leopold’s household physically, mentally, and ultimately emotionally. Leopold himself must have dealt with the feeling of being succeeded by his son (perhaps far in advance of Mozart’s marriage) and eventually the realization of his son’s new independence. The writing of Idomeneo itself reflects a cooperative shaping of ideas and libretto by Mozart and his father, and the parallel conflicts of father and son did not go unnoticed by Mozart (Heartz 1978). Mozart shows us through his true-to-life characterizations of lovers and fathers the importance of piety, honesty, independence, and agape in a healthy interpersonal relationship with family and spouse.
Response
My own response to Zauberflöte has been developing in part since I first saw the 2006 televised performances of Julie Taymoor’s Met production in J.D. McLatchy’s excellent English translation, and in part from my involvement in UNH’s student production in the spring of 2009. The former production introduced me (the month after I first saw Don Giovanni – heady days!) to a cast of lively and fascinating characters; the latter drew me into the labyrinth of emotions and revelations that is the Flute, and involved me personally in the libretto and music through the words on the subtitles I helped to implement and the voices of my friends. Hearing my friends’ beautiful and loved voices sing Mozart’s beautiful lines, I fell in love with all the characters, “good” or “bad,” and the orchestra (even if occasionally out of tune) also seduced me. My topic for this paper grew out of my involvement in that production, as this was a paper that I simply had to write! These characters appealed to me to fix their problems and grant them a happy ending, but Mozart thankfully does that better than I could; their main dilemma presented itself to me as the lack or presence of human companionship and understanding of human relationships. I began little by little to visit and revisit this issue, and uncover the small clues Mozart gives us for understanding how we relate to one another.
The choice of filial relationships is motivated by both its importance to the plot and my own personal life; my experience with the difficulties inherent in growing up and relating to one’s parent(s) has not yet yielded any answers, but this is clearly a soft spot for Mozart, Pamina, her costars, and myself. My own relationship with my mother can be difficult as I strive to become independent and create my own identity and worldview. Her apparent judgement of my choices from her personal worldview still has the ability to negatively affect my confidence in self and choices; whether or not I agree with her on any particular point of morality, politics or opinion, I still give credence both conscious and unconscious to her views. In this period of growth I can sympathize with Pamina: even though my mother would not command me to murder or be killed, the choice between disagreeing with one’s parent or one’s yet undefended beliefs can be painful.
The characters in Zauberflöte, like me, have a certain dependence on a support system of family and/or friends. My own experience of losing my father to cancer in 2008 taught me the importance of this support structure: friends who walked with me, figuratively, were of great value. This support structure is shown positively in Flute in the actions of Pamina, who supports Papageno (Bei Männern) and Tamino (the trials of fire and water) at emotional low points. Pamina herself relies on her mother for this emotional support and direction (mir klingt der Muttername süsse; dagger-scene/Der Hölle Rache; Pamina’s suicide scene) even when her mother has a negative emotional impact on her; this is the negative manifestation of her support structure. Personally, my closeness and reliance on my mother can have both of these effects on me: if she is ill, my world collapses, and if she and I are on good terms as we are nearly all the time, my world is a brighter place. The filial relationship for me, as apparently for Mozart as well as for his characters, is both a challenge and a blessing for which I deem the challenge worthwhile.
My experiences with Mozart’s operas before this class and coming out of it have taught me, in the most general sense, that human nature is flawed but life is beautiful anyway. Just as we cannot completely write off Don Giovanni as “evil,” most humans cannot be categorized as completely good or evil, and categorization itself only becomes more flawed and impossible the further you investigate a person’s character. It is so easy to judge a person on the basis of received opinion, or a casual assessment of qualities, yet ultimately can we ever completely know – or understand – anyone? My continued exposure to complex characters and others’ complex reactions to them has shown me the kaleidoscopic variety of impressions we develop of each other and of the world. No one of these impressions shows the entire picture; perspective is as blind as it is seeing, but without these impressions we cannot be said to be fully alive.
Works Cited
Heartz, Daniel. "Mozart, his father, and 'Idomeneo'." Musical Times, 1978: 228-231.
Schroeder, David. Mozart in Revolt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Starobinski, Jean and Pevear, Richard. "The Promise of Idomeneo." The Hudson Review, 2002: 15-30.
[1] Tamino’s process of initiation into the Queen’s trust parallels and mocks the “true” initiation he must undergo to reach Sarastro, yet another one of the reversals Mozart leads us through in our Enlightenment primer.
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