Three new documents on "Die Zauberflöte"
Posted: Mon, 16 Mar 2015
We have just added to our site three early newspaper reports on Die Zauberflöte:
• A report sent by an anonymous correspondent in Vienna to the Münchner Zeitung, under the dateline 1 Oct 1791, the day after the opera’s premiere on 30 Sep. This is now the earliest known dated report on the opera following its premiere.
• An important report sent by an anonymous correspondent in Vienna to the Bayreuther Zeitung under the dateline 5 Oct 1791. The report states that Mozart was rewarded with the box-office receipts from the opera's third performance, a claim that is unknown from any other source. The correspondent also recognizes the parallels between Die Zauberflöte and Jean Terrasson’s Sethos, parallels that up to now have been thought only to have been recognized in the 19th century.
Because of this document’s importance and the light that it sheds on the Viennese context at the time of the opera's premiere, we have included an article-length commentary.
• A report sent by an anonymous correspondent in Vienna to the Münchner Zeitung under the dateline 8 Oct 1791. This is a minor but interesting variant of a previously known report published in the Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten (Neue Folge, 72).
Because the report dated 5 Oct 1791 places Die Zauberflöte in the wider context of Viennese theatrical life at the time, and because the correspondent claims that Viennese audiences are flocking to the suburban theaters partly out of boredom with the offerings at the court theater in Vienna, we have also provided as an appendix (hosted at the site RPubs) an extended analysis of the box-office receipts from operas in the Burgtheater in the months leading up to the premiere of Mozart’s opera.