Perguntas frequentes

It is an opera, a real opera, with real, classically-trained operatic singing voices, and all of the actors do their own singing - none of them are dubbed by other singers. The setting has been changed to World War I, a few things have been modernized, and the opera is performed in English rather than German, but the film still uses the original opera's storyline quite faithfully, and the music itself has been very faithfully rendered. It uses Mozart's original orchestrations and voice ranges. The film even retains the overture to the opera, which is performed by the orchestra at the very beginning.

Yes, it does, but in the original, even the dialogue is in German, and whenever the singing is performed in its original language, the dialogue is nearly always spoken in German as well. The reviewer who claimed that spoken dialogue was added to this version of "The Magic Flute" was mistaken; the opera is always performed with spoken dialogue, whatever the language. Some record albums of the opera, especially those made pre-1966, omit the spoken dialogue, but it is always included in stage productions, and it was included in the 1975 Ingmar Bergman film version, which was made in Swedish.

"The Magic Flute" is a singspiel, not a grand opera. A grand opera is sung all the way through, like Verdi's "Aida" or his "Rigoletto", or Mozart's own "Don Giovanni" and "The Marriage of Figaro". A singspiel is much like an operetta, such as "The Merry Widow" ; the plot is moved along partly by spoken dialogue. Singspiels were always written in the composer's native language, while grand operas at that time were always written in Italian. Mozart's "Don Giovanni", "The Marriage of Figaro", "Idomeneo", and "Cosi Fan Tutte" are all written in Italian, even though Mozart was Austrian.

This film of "The Magic Flute" is probably easier to follow for most English-speaking audiences than the stage version of the opera because the dialogue is spoken in regular, everyday English.

Other famous singspiels include Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio" and Beethoven's "Fidelio". They are written in German, like "The Magic Flute".

No, in the film all the sexist references have been completely eradicated, and the racism has been so de-emphasized that it no longer seems like racism. Monostatos, rather than being played by a white man wearing blackface makeup, as is still usually done in most productions, is played in this film by Tom Randle, a real African-American.

In the original opera, which was written in 1791, there are references to a woman's need to be guided by a man, one of the high priests states that women's opinions should not be taken seriously, and it is strongly implied that women in power are more dangerous than men in the same position. None of these remarks are in the film; in fact, the sexist references are now usually either taken out of stage productions of the work as well, or deliberately satirized, since they would cause somewhat of an uproar today if played straight.

In the stage version, the evil Monostatos is a Moor, and it is implied that his origins have much to do with how rotten he is. He is just as evil in the film (he is always trying to rape Pamina), and again, he is black, but nowhere in the film is it implied that his race has anything to do with his behavior.