226 - The Magic Flute, 1975, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.

Monday, August 14, 2017

226 - The Magic Flute, 1975, Sweden.  Dir. Ingmar Bergman.

Tamino and Pamina.

Papageno and Papagena.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart premiered his opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) in 1791 in Vienna.

Ingmar Bergman first saw Mozart's opera in 1930, when he was 12.  He tried to recreate it with puppets at home.

Throughout his career as a movie director he was working simultaneously as a theatre director.  He had stated on radio as early as the 1960s that he wanted to film The Magic Flute for television.

Now Bergman stages The Magic Flute for television.

To film the opera, he had a complete copy of the Drottningholm Palace Theatre stage built on a soundstage at the Swedish Film Institute.

Bergman used a Swedish libretto, which had been prepared a few years earlier.

With his usual focus on faces, Bergman opens the opera by having cinematographer Sven Nykvist sit on a close-up of a girl in the audience, and then other audience members, as the Overture plays.

Act I.

The curtain opens.

Tamino, the prince, is chased by a dragon.  He asks the gods to save him.  He faints.  Three ladies appear and rescue him.  They fight over him.  They leave.

Papageno enters playing the pan flute.  Tamino awakens and thinks he killed the dragon.  He takes credit.  The ladies enter and padlock his mouth to stop him from lying.

They show him a picture of Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night.  He falls in love.

Bergman inserts filmed footage of her in the brooch so that she magically looks up at him from the picture as he sings to her.

The opera will follow the story but with some changes--made by Bergman.

It is energetic and lively.

And when we cut back to the girl in the audience, her face is filled with joy.