INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘THE MAGIC FLUTE’ “Can this be the end of worry?”

 © 2020 by James Clark

      The films of Ingmar Bergman always present difficulties—difficulties of narrative (as with nearly all films); and difficulties of theme (as almost unique). Unlike virtually all other film artists, his communications presuppose that each of his works vitally contribute to the one being viewed. Unlike normal conundrums which may be absolutely resolved, the interest Bergman has attended to will never disappear. His embrace of his theme is complex to a degree almost unimaginable.  But in the case of those who have devoted time and energy to hopefully grasping the heart of those haunting depths, it remains a shock and a dismay that the range of these films have not been recognized. (The situation here, is likened to Reichardt’s Wendy mired in narrative, while Lucy makes a hidden difference.)

Though our helmsman leaves movie buffs bemused, he is, in fact, far from the only practitioner of his ilk. In ancient Greece, there were thinkers who drove their sensibilities along lines familiar to Bergman. They encountered the advantage-zeal-simplism emanating from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and their Judeo-Christian offshoots with their punitive style. The so-called Dark Ages were not only about Neanderthals, but also furnaces of inquisitional pedantry. By the time of the 18^th century, and the overrated Age of Enlightenment, a form of surreptitious opposition to throttling of what the pre-Socratics had discovered, had become a shadowy form of rebellion, known as Freemasonry [free building]. One of the artistic giants of the era, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was, in fact, a Freemason; along with a close associate, Emanuel Schikaneder, who became the librettist for the Mozart opera, The Magic Flute (1791).

Bergman was, as you know, an inspired builder of filmic innovation. But, with his version of The Magic Flute (1975), his muse abandoned the totally new, in delight with a sort of sidekick, namely, Mozart. The film we see today does put out a vigorous recommendation on behalf of classical rational power, in accordance with a clientele besotted with Age-of-Enlightenment righteousness. But Mozart, while giving due to the status quo in the opera, evinces, with Mozartian elegance, a subversive counterattack. Aptly, then, Bergman, always subversive, will alight upon features of the modern world in his scenario, having made no significant progress beyond the days of Mozart. But he must also acknowledge the rare, if quixotic, daring, spilling out from one, remarkable modest source, being food for thought in a world convinced that only a mob can get things done.

  

Three golden clouds become reflected on a lake where ducks quack. This shimmering resolves to three closely positioned radiant towers of striking beauty. A statement of disinterestedness, paradoxically opening a saga rife with rabid advantage. Then, in a cut to an estate with towering trees, which manage to be neither real nor unreal, reminding us of the full-fledged forest at the outset of Bergman’s film, Cries and Whispers (1972), which eschews facile piety, an overture—comprising three melodramatic opening notes and a sunburst sky upon an old stone statue of a warrior bidding to upstage those mysterious motions in the lake.

Having opened up a volatile current in this way, it may be apt to mention that both Masonic Mozart and warrior Bergman never lose sight of a trio like the one in the lake. Each of them navigates the stream of their sensibility by which to temper a rampage of statement which would result in grotesque insistence. Rolling back such a travesty would bring to bear a third presence (of synthesis), maintaining that threesome which only a consummate acrobat and juggler can deliver (acrobatics and juggling being watchwords for Bergman, as illuminating in his film, The Seventh Seal [1957]). And here, again, that matter of rancor and confusion cannot be detached from those crucial resolves. Therefore, by way of emphasizing the fixture of poison, the preamble slashes across the rococo scene, in the form of an extensive filmic presentation of the audience, in 1975, of a performance, in Swedish, of Mozart’s blue-chip opera. Many cameos come and go, and return again, during the Overture. But one figure comes to us in a special way, a blonde girl about 13 years of age. On presenting her in close-up, being vaguely questioning, there is a cut to the theatre’s closed curtain and its figures, so different from the modernists. On a beige ground, a cupid looks out to a secular gratification. Once again, there is the girl, now flashing a secular glare. Back we go, to the rest of that curtain, a woman warrior in a helmet, and brandishing a spear. The tough customer changes her sneer to a more accepting tone. Following that passage, there are close-ups of other patrons, some less intense than the girl; and others more wrapped in concern for cares having nothing to do with the show about to fully begin. Moreover, the magic camera of Sven Nykvist often launches cuts amongst the audience so rapidly and with parts of faces and bodies indistinct in close-up to an upshot of strong unusualness. There is also a remarkable range of nationalities in that theatre, especially in view of Sweden’s homogeneousness at that era. In fact there are ripples of pan shots showing many from lands beyond the Caucasian world. Many of those show a pleasure in dipping into a new experience. And, as we attempt to find the motive of such a bizarre introduction, we do settle upon the factor of diversity of outlooks. Before long, the blonde girl comes to us with a wicked smirk. The Overture has landed her, not into a vigorous musical and theatrical reflection, but into the realization that such diversity around her in her (perhaps rather sheltered) life constitutes a complexity of priorities she instinctively hates.

    And here, about to mine the scenario of righteousness triumphant, is the Anna of Bergman’s film, The Passion of Anna (1969), and her war cry, “Real Security,” a woman warrior ready to savage all but those, like herself, who maintain a saccharine cocoon devoid of depth, creative joy and loving courage. That is to say, this strange film is a prequel to the Anna rampaging (with impunity) in the earlier film. That is also to say that such outrage won’t stop, though it might be outflanked. Our film today measures those gifts in the shadows, from Heraclitus, from Mozart and from Bergman, to mention a few.

Before leaving this polyglot assembly, we should acknowledge resources of endeavors in the seats, never to be big names but always noticed in apt time. Whereas that beige motif—reaching over to the narrow chromatic talents of Marianne, the frequently married in the Bergman film, Scenes from a Marriage (1973)—spells effete toying, there are in that theatre visitors who could belong to what Mozart hoped. Bergman has posited, in addition to Anna’s cheerleading, many elderly music lovers, whose faces reflect ravages of strife, disappointment and ongoing struggles. Also, there are Asians and Africans, perhaps bringing to the event more intuitive earthiness than the regular opera patrons. And, in addition, there could, from amidst comfortable circumstances, those who extend themselves beyond their habits. (It is not, I think, far-fetched to notice that the audience watching a far from glowing film, in Abbas Kiarostami’s film, Shirin [2008], has been somewhat modelled upon Bergman’s film and Mozart’s opera.) Let Anna sulk and scheme; but many of her fellow attendees have been scouted for something better, though better may be only very slight.

In order to cut to the chase of a cluttered melodrama, we’ll point out at the get go that the main holy (Enlightenment) man and guardian of Plato’s pedantry, namely, Sarastro, keeping the faith for a planet at a safe, Hollywood measure, is a dead ringer for the sainted Orson Welles! The latter’s stature, in the firmament of big, particularly rests upon the 1938 radio broadcast, “The War of the Worlds,” and the 1941 film, Citizen Kane (the latter regarding more or less fake news to make things happen). This Sarastro, having a cabinet of professorial pedants decked out in clerical robes in tune with what academic action has always been and always will be, had stumbled into a troubling marriage with a figure calling herself “The Queen of the Night”—her breasts on display being Marilyn-like. As this Los Angeles takeover by Bergman, putatively keeping abreast of modern times, wends its express-like way, the job of 21^st century war here should take precedence.

    Perhaps the best way to discern any daylight here is to hang on to the travesty of Hollywood and its endless soap operas. To that effect, the so-called “serpent” of Mozart and Schikaneder, presumably starting the excitement, becomes a T-Rex on the order of a middling kids birthday party. The protagonist, namely, “Prince Tamino,” runs amok with this supposed excitement and becomes saved by a trio (of course; and, of course, out of order) of the female minions of the Queen. So there we have the designated hero being rescued by women. “Oh, help, and protect me now!” (Right here we have the roots of a flaming disciple of the system of deus ex machina. Of course, he’ll toe the line and end up the successor of Orson Welles. But a lot of verve flies out elsewhere, verve we need to examine.)

The girls sing, “Our valor saved him from the beast!” They also sing, “This is indeed a youth most fair. Such beauty in a man is rare… Indeed, he has a graceful air.” (Tamino looks a lot like our Prime Minister—a mixed blessing, indeed. Now, in fact, having given the heavy lifting to a woman, while he delivers boring platitudes and stands in for selfies.) Those days the Queen was livid, due to Sarastro’s kidnapping their daughter, Pamina, on the basis that her mother is not a team player. With Tamino being a shoo-in for heroics of various kinds (including putting a smile on Pamina’s face), there appears a non-matinee idol and bird-catcher, namely, Papageno, whose fate it is to be regarded by one and all as a clown. His introductory aria, however, shows that he himself intuits being as bright as anyone, and perhaps a bit more. “A fowler gay in me you see. There are not many more like me…I’m a well-known person here, beloved wherever I appear. I play my pipe, and at the sound all kind of birds do flock around… Of course I’m happy in my trade, but I get lonesome for a maid.”

Though the rescue mission carries Tamino’s name, Papageno, whose habitat is that domain of darkness, is drafted to accompany the adventure. The latter reaches the fortification/ prison quickly, because he trusts a poetic nature. “A bird showed me the way.” Tamino’s far slower transportation is a prosaic hybrid of low-tech blimp, requiring manual cranking, and bemusing mumbo jumbo involving three young children, called, “spirits,” delivering the action. Adding to the facile conclusiveness, we have learned that slam-dunk Tamino will become the daughter’s lover, no question about it. “If you are not indifferent to her, then bliss, honor and fame await you.” The “Queen,” a somewhat daft poet running that jurisdiction, dips into mechanisms to have her (and her operatic-pedantic audience’s) way. A magic locket of hers—an early phone—brings up the pretty girl. And she outfits Tamino with a magic flute; moreover she endows Papageno with a set of magic chimes. But the latter already is adept with his pan pipes. This dream-job—the Queen’s fixers, sing, “The path to fortune lies open…”—launches with the boss bragging about her state-of the-art equipment. “Just play, and you may take for granted your listeners will be enchanted. The sad will feel the joy of life. The bachelor will seek a wife. For by its sound man is inspired to live in peace with all the earth.” At this rush of idealization, Papageno remarks, “… not really my line…” (Anna sneers at the lack of consensus.)

    Papageno crashes the sanctuary, begins to usher Pamina away from the golden rule, and then he runs afoul of the enforcer of this effete Gulag. That narrative setback is nothing dramatic to thrill about. But the solidifying of ironical American entertainment priorities here, is a startling challenge in the current of Bergman’s quiet war. Monostatos, the eagle eye, has been cast in the vision of actor, Lorne Greene, the Ben Cartwright mover and shaker and bane to cow-rustlers, in the long-running American television Western, “Bonanza.” Monostatos’ rather exotic surface and hyperbolic delivery has been intensified by the 14^th century clown-jester head-piece of two streamers extending from both sides of the head—rather like long-horn cattle. Here we go, into the realm of Bonanza! Later, Papageno sings out some syncopation to Monostatos and his calves (little kids with those horns), to imply that the whole ponderous statement, pushed by Sarastro, can be countered by forces of lyricism. He had tried, vaguely, to impart to Pamina that in the currents of mood she could begin to get real. “How sweet the lot of womanhood, love will warm us day and night. Love is the source of true delight…” But in being thus encouraging, he slips beyond problematical tonality, and becomes a huckster. Here we have the first of a series of members of the cast with a card held up, expressing axioms, dovetailing with television commercials. “Love brings relief in pain and sorrow. It soothes a soul in misery.” That “relief”- sell will go apace to detonate a clutch of time-bombs on the order of gospel TV, Christmas cards and political sloganeering.

Then, right on cue, photogenic Tamino is easily persuaded to join the flush competition. The “spirits” tell him, “This path will lead you to your goal, if you pay heed to this expedient… Here are the rules: Don’t lose control; Be steadfast, silent and obedient… Obey the rules and you will succeed, if you make use of the expedient.” At the imposing castle gates, he disregards three flames and pronounces, “I strangely feel it would be wise for me to do as they advise.” On a quick take of the façade, he’s ready to say, “The gates and columns, their towering beauty, would point to a reign of art, wisdom and beauty. Where art is protected, and beauty may dwell. The people are happy, the master rules well… My purpose is noble, my notions are pure…” (Coherence, what coherence?)

    Though he flounders to the tune of, “Sarastro, mark these words, you scum!” he soon tangles with a professorial type, dressed like a medieval priest, in an office clogged to the ceiling with books, who readily and successfully changes what mind he possesses. The prof uses a quill pen, but such lack of weight is plenty enough to turn Tamino into a budding priest, the landslide of classical rationality virtually mowing down everyone in its path. (As the weak protagonist plays ball, a cut to Anna in the seats finds her in seventh heaven.) The keeper of the magic flute moves on to entices many woodland creatures. But, unlike the nature of Papageno, Tamino attracts Disney creatures, far more denizens of bourgeois nurseries than wild beasts. Consequently, Tamino’s song rounds up Pamina and Papageno, as the reluctant wild ones clarify where they will remain for life. Pamina asks, “Can this be the end of worry?” And, for a second time, Papageno slips into prime time. “Faint hearts never won a single thing,” he declares, from resources of care and resources of carelessness. He resorts to the chimeric chimes, instead of his trusty pan pipes. “Sweetly chiming bells, your worth is beyond all measure. Would that everyone on earth would have so dear a treasure. Then to your harmonious souls love would flourish all around. It would mean the end of strife, fear and violations. Love would heal the nations.” (The prissy rhyming here does, in fact, heal nothing,)

That would serve as the jangled preamble of Sarastro’s (tone-deaf) power in action, shining on his daughter’s betrothal. A torchlight parade has flared up, and we hear cheers of, “We hail our master, his heavenly visions! He wisely decides and we gladly obey. He is our prophet…he shows us the way!” Having a Citizen Kane knack for what the market wants to hear, he handsomely forgives Pamina for having a taste for the uncanny, “the night.” Also, he welcomes Tamino, whose malleability has been widely noted. In an impetuous move (driven by a trace of deadly error), the “master” finds in the dreamboat the perfect way to spend the perfect retirement, free from the baleful consequences of his cowardice.  A committee of heavy readers and full-length robes  performs a further scrutiny of the promising stranger. Sarastro declares, “Tamino is waiting [for your approval]. He intensely desires to find a goal and purpose in life, and aspires to become a member of our brotherhood.”/ “Is he virtuous?”/ “He is.”/ “Is he fearless.”/ “He is.”/ “Is he reticent?”/ The chief smiles and nods, “Yes”/ “You deem him worthy, do you not?”/ “For Tamino, I have destined my daughter. Therefore, I took her away from her mother, an arrogant creature. She would have our Temple reduced to ashes. Her ultimate purpose is to control the world. Pamina and Tamino shall protect our holy principles… In true love, you shall find the origin of wisdom. That is why I shall resign my power to Pamina and Tamino.”

    Although the fix is in, with the cabinet rather sluggishly approving the abrupt new wave, the culture insists that the power-to-be perform feats of great daring to ensure that the leader be some kind of Hollywood hero, as against day-to-day equilibrium. Though unexplained, the inclusion of Papageno in this display, may have to with the latter’s bona fides beyond optics. While Tamino dons a clerical robe and a clerical demeanor (eyes shut) and close to a single flame needing more than that, when the clerk directing that so-called “House of Trials,” asks Papageno, “Would you, too, strive to obtain wisdom?” the natural hunter replies, “No thank you… A good night’s sleep, good food and drink, that’ll do me.” (With a background of cave paintings and a grim reaper.) The clerk moots finding for him a pretty and virtuous wife. (Bergman amends that wife, who was very old in the original, to a pretty young girl.) This gives Papageno a start; and after some suspicion, he goes ahead with the proposition. (“Like me?”/ “Young and pretty!”)”What’s her name?”/ “Papagena!” (The making of a synthesis.) You must not speak to her until the three trials are over. At this unforthcoming scheme, Papageno begins to feel that the Queen of the Night, his bird supply client, has more to offer than kill-joys. He utters the heresy, “An evil spirit is presiding over this sacred brotherhood.” Tamino scolds, “A wise man trusts himself and forms opinions of his own…” (The setting is rife with skeletons and skulls.) The savvy  hunter of hidden goods recalls, “It’s also said the devil feasts upon the victims of the priests…” (an allusion to the former priest, in Bergman’s, The Seventh Seal [1957], stealing from victims of a plague). “To trust the Queen, I am inclined…” At which, Tamino argues, “A Queen still has a woman’s mind.”

Papageno begins to cry, due to the lack of cogency swirling around him. The clerk tells him, “Pull yourself together now. Be a man! But the rural guy has a very different cruising speed. “Man be damned. If the gods intended Papagena for me, why all these nightmares? On the endless journey, love may be lost on the way.” (To emphasize that Papageno’s expectations can be faulty, there is a cut to the swarthy cowboy, complaining that his color shuts him out of the good times. His soliloquy is delivered in face of a sleeping Pamina, and his ire drives him to declare, “Though she find me reprehensive, I shall own her here tonight.” Then, in another of those roiling moods, he thinks the better of it and leaves the bedroom—a bolt of energy no one else in sight can manage. On the heels of Monostatos’ recovery from committing  rape [one of those fender-benders Papageno, when weakening, wants to see gone for good].) There is a parallel U-turn in an awakening Pamina. She envisions that her mother represents unfinished business and that she (Pamina) is obliged to kill the father who had big plans for her. This reverie, then, strikes the daughter that both parents are bad news, lacking nuance. Though embroiled in such nuance, Pamina won’t seriously touch it, for herself. (The putatively cool mom, now acts like a lunatic. “I’ll curse you forever,” if the melodramatic event fails to happen. The musical delivery by the Queen resembles an irate rooster.) Then Sarastro drops by and imparts to her his soporific, utopian creed. “No wrath may be permitted within those sacred walls.” That day, Tamino religiously undergoes a trial of silence—good news to the high priest; but bad news to a Pamina inferring that he no longer loves her. (In a little scene bringing to mind the skits of Abbot and Costello, Papageno babbles along, running into the fury of serious, pedant-guy Bud Abbott.) As this seasick moment progresses, we discern three lights in a row, the middle one out of order. The cheeky one of the duo declares, “I wish I were back in the woods. At least I might hear a bird.” He keeps coming back to the girl being a prize for undertaking the tests, and he argues, “Her kiss would prevent me from thinking…” We had had a little flash of the eager girl before being held back by the clerk—a very pretty girl, in fact. And when finally she does appear (way before the tests are done), she has put on a shock wig and blackened her teeth. That evokes from the fowler, who was having a drink of water, a spray of the water, surprise and mirth, nearing to uncanniness. His sense of humor being in great contrast to the deadly solemn coming from all but Papagena. “Come, keep me company,” he invites.  “Lessen my boredom… How old are you?” She laughs, “How old? Eighteen years and two minutes…” They share a laugh, and he says, “I suppose you have a sweetheart…” “You bet!” she retorts. “As old as you?” he braces./ “Ten years older than me. That’s love for you!”/ “What is his name, then?”/ “His name is Papageno!” And she pokes him, as he had poked her./ “What’s your name?” he asks./ She flops over like a rag doll. “My name is Papagena!” And she runs away. By contrast, Tamino plays a melancholy tune on his failure-to-thrive flute, surrounded by those skeletons and skulls. Coming at the end of that achievement of carefree, we have been readied for a satirical version of the sublime. (Here also, we have Anna back, pondering a collapse of domestic security.)

    Pamina, after slogging through snow in the courtyard and close to suicide, has a rather delirious rendezvous from the “spirits,” which brings her to the revelation that Tamino the machine would only seem rude and treasonous if he had been obliged to keep silent  as a sacred duty. (An early nudge of depression had the child angels yelling, “She’s utterly demented!”) Before this realization fully took hold, she would dash desperately back and forth along black fencing against pristine, white snow, the real magic of dynamics so hard to maintain in a Dark Ages world. The dead weight, the daft weight, and what now? That “what now?” becomes the real point of the shower of history our film poses, Bergman knowing that long after he would be gone the bankruptcy he had audited would move to another reckoning.

Patching her romance and getting back to easy street—“Hurry now, I miss him so!”—flushes out a big smile from Anna. Also back, is one of those TV heavens, perhaps, “I’ll be home for Christmas”: “Two hearts that love, having conjugated, cannot be separated. They need not ever fear a foe. The gods protect them where they go.” What remains here, in the form of a coda, provides supplements of what could be called, “The War of the Worlds.”

One of the profs tells her, “Your father permits you to visit Tamino in The House of Trials. You are to give him his flute.” Sarastro announces, “Oh, comrades in our brotherhood, see what splendor!” A chorus sings, “Soon to our sacred band he swears allegiance.” (Ceremony, in the billions, like this, having produced imprisonment while imagining getting ahead.) The new face of oldness enters a burning cave where much fighting and rutting is in session. Tamino the Grim had played his “magic” flute which ensured that the pious lovers would tread safely within this hell. (The preamble of that trial is strewn with torches inviting creative logic [dialectic] which, in this context, will never come to fruition.) The pedants pule, “He who endures this deadly passage to the end will be purified to ascend to heaven. The gods of wisdom shall his eyes unseal… Thus to him the mysteries of life reveal.” (Tamino places his hand over his heart.) The sealing of the deal, for a presumed great job, elicits, “I don’t fear the unknown yonder. The virtuous path I long to wonder.” (Anna likes what she sees—real security.) There they are, like a couple of beloved TV stars, or smart YouTube heroes. The fans cheer, “Advance! Advance! Advance into the sanctuary!” And don’t tell me it’s overkill.

At that moment, the Queen of the Night, completely off the rails, stages an attempt to wipe those grins off their face. Monostatos joins her bootless resentment. Of course, a cast numbering millions would brush them off. But the only highlight there is the Queen evading extinction, while Monostatos commits suicide, and her fall to the pedantry of domination retaining a frail speck of dignity. Pamina witnesses that perdurance, but, in a draft of Bergmanesque drama, she opts for “real [mob] security,” instead of lonely depth. The Age of Enlightenment, as far as the [myopic] eye can see. At a victory parade, Sarastro warms up the troops with, “Victorious Truth will enhance his renown!” (To be amended by, “Victorious humbug metastasizes apace.”) Two falcons are in attendance, for decorative, not substantive, action. (Another deuce lacking a third.) After the wedding and the celebration of the new leaders, Sarastro leaves town. Why? We have, on his departure, another glimpse of a quick hesitation. Why would he not stay on during the new wonderfulness? Orson the gamer, knowing something else has not been handled well, and requires solitude to really shine?

The film dares us to find, in a goof, more creative equilibrium than a powerhouse of pious dominance. That the paradox rifles through the operatic, melodramatic foreground, to be overtaken by a marginal and hard to read modernist glitch in the audience—Anna being the only obvious 18^th century dogmatist in the house—endows the film with its Bergman imprimatur. However, with the display of quite total allergy to what the cosmos provides, the drama of errancy becomes precisely the domain of a pronounced creativity. Having seen from the get-go that joining the madness of that morality would be a wasted life, Papageno has become all about finding that girl with ambient wit. (His long-term plight, couched about what’s wrong with him, could well be in fact regarding what’s wrong with them.) He roams the area of the fortress, calling out her name. He makes a turn to hanging himself, due to having lost the only one he can imagine living with. But, to his surprise, he finds, “I make no move… Now let’s see if I should count to three” (a big smile crossing his face). After three, he once again wonders about dying by his own hands, only to feel that that move doesn’t attain to cogency. (In the Bergman film, Summer Interlude [1951], a selfish ballerina confronts her shabbiness and proceeds to leverage her grossness to a strange form of euphoria. Her turnaround lacks staying power. Papageno and Papagena are something else. Such a “glitch,” though, could be a rich field of dreams.)  The metaphoric spirits once again oversee what is in his heart, pelting him with snowballs for being stupid. “Your only life is lost if you should die…” And, more metaphor, he remembers the chimes of a musical patron. “Maybe you wouldn’t feel so tragic,” the three metaphors nudge, if you had used your bells of magic” [bells of courage]. “My little bells ring sweetly for me and call my darling girl to me…” Far from eloquent, they meet again like this: “Then I’ll be your tender hubby…”/ “And I’ll be your little missus…” (That the bells were seen first in the air, implies [metaphorically] an elegant partnership.)

   One of Papageno’s many slips involves trying to take credit for the kill of the monster, a feeble show of cheap advantage. But that he makes up for it is a bit of a mess, is perhaps as much as can be expected on this tone-deaf planet/ stage. Papageno, fresh from his pardon from the lie, fires out the facile prayer, “Oh that the lies of every liar could thus be sealed and locked for good, instead of malice, hate and ire.” The pedantry of the former brings nothing substantive to the reflection. At its heart, the demand of this film calls for unprecedented nuance. Going on to speak of a lovely brood of girls and boys,” Papagena delights in the discovery, “We do not need a lucky penny, we shall be fortunate indeed…”  (Papageno’s syncopation had lead Papagena to him.) Anna begins to celebrate, but the improvisational keenness onstage, the volatility, distresses and annoys the budding fascist. The two rough and ready on the fringes of stricture close the action with a large family of children.

The actress/ singer playing Papagena has been captured at the stage wings of the theatre, expressing her affection for the actor/ singer playing Papageno. In addition to the audience, we have a glimpse of the modern backstage during the intermission of the show. Many of those in clerical/ academic garb shed their one-track tone. The actor/ singer, organizing The House of Trial, hands over to the actor/ singer playing Sarastro the score of the 19^th century opera, Parsifal, a work influenced by Buddhism. One of the children/ longhorns reads a Micky Mouse comic book, which includes Donald Duck and Goofy. The Queen of the Night smokes a cigarette under a sign saying No Smoking. The T-Rex plods by, apparently unwilling to go home. The actor/ singer playing Tamino plays a game of chess with the actress/ singer playing Pamina. She wins easily. At two points of the curtain, Sarastro and the comic kid peer out at the audience. (From the past to the present. And what do you have?) In a bit of a hybrid, the Papageno is first seen backstage, asleep, then waking up and rushing to meet his cue. Along the way, he passes a chessboard. Also, two candles alight, kick off the endless work and play. This links, once again, to a “glitch,” like that fortuitousness coming out of oblivion.