Bergman’s Magic Flute

Considered as an allegory, The Magic Flute has skeptical things to say about the fate of art in society. (It fights a winning battle against any spectator because it says them playfully.) On a different level, the opera, among the few one hears of in childhood, is an initiation by magic into the universe of good and evil. (Like a number of profoundly grown-up works it can indeed be enjoyed by children.) Above all, and despite the fact that one does not meet remarkably imaginative characters in the story, The Magic Flute is about imagination and power. Here, as in other respects, it breathes a common air with The Tempest, where the shipwrecked sailor’s dream of governing and Prospero’s own abdica...