The Magic Flute (Night Music #9)

Mozart's last opera, the simultaneously comic and serious fairy tale The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), is as problematic as anything in the medium. Some deplore it for its perceived sexism and racism; some deplore it for its arguably goofy plot. "Depending on your perspective," writes David Foil, it "is either the silliest opera ever written or a work of profound insight that happens to be dressed in the trappings of a cartoon." That it is Mozart's sublime music that ennobles something meant to be merely a short-lived popular entertainment is not in question.

The Magic Flute is also one of the world's best-loved operas and is adapted to the comics by award-winning illustrator P. Craig Russell, whom John Rockwell writing in The New York Times calls "the comic artist who has most actively involved himself with opera." Abroad farcical tale cloaked in a façade of full-blown fantasy - dragons, magic, princesses, and the mysterious Fellowship and Followers of Light - The Magic Flute offers complex psychological themes. The story begins as the Queen of the Night sets Prince Tamino on a quest to rescue her daughter, Pamina, from the evil Sarastro. On the way he meets the bird-catcher Papageno, who is "persuaded" to help Tamino in his quest. Tamino's spiritual quest is counterpoised with Papageno's own earthly search for his one true love, Papagena. Both couples' striving towards higher awareness are juxtaposed with the eternal conflict between Sarastro and the Queen of the Night.

Fantasia / HQ, comics, mangá