However we negotiate, compromise, temporize, there is no honest way to reconcile us to these aspects of Die Zauberflöte, or they to us, or to evade at least a subliminal recognition that a value system we consider morally inferior to ours nonetheless disgorged a work that, in addition to being charming and amusing, still leaves a profound impression of nobility and spiritual truth. No use pleading that this is symbolic and that metaphorical, or that this is now and that was then, or explaining it all away in terms of modern psychology. Can’t get here from there, unless you’ve lived the intervening 232 years. So, short of banning performance altogether, there are only two choices: present the opera whole and with all the musical and dramatic force we can summon, or transform it beyond recognition, into a harmless something else. I, naturally, would take the former course. Monostatos would be black, because that’s what he calls himself and is called by others.^(I) I’d even include the dialogue scene among the Three Slaves, between the Quintet, No. 5, and the Trio, No. 6 (“Du feines Täubchen, nur herein!“), wherein the Slaves, who are not black, rejoice at the thought of the “arrogant, fat-bellied” Schwarze‘s punishment for forcing himself on Pamina. And there’d be no softening of his representation as a nasty piece of work, though one for whom his little aria and his severe punishment evoke sympathy. I’d look first for a black singer with a strong, biting low tenor and an educated awareness of language and style who’s willing to take the assignment. If such cannot be found, I’d cast a similarly qualified white singer and give him a meticulously realistic makeup job. For that matter, Tamino, who is stipulated as Asian (Japanese, or Javanese) in the original libretto, would also be given his identity through the wonderful art of stage cosmetics.

With respect to equality of the sexes, I’d certainly attempt to contextualize, for those willing to lend an ear, by pointing out that for Mozart and Schikaneder, it was a boldly progressive act to show Pamina undergoing her own trials, joining Tamino in his final ones and even guiding him through them, and emerging as an equal partner in an elevated variety of the man/woman union that she and Papageno so winningly celebrate in their famous duet. Representing that on the stage must have been a shock to the lodge brothers of the time and place, who could perhaps have rationalized it as part of a fairy-tale comedy. ^(II) But context aside, it would be a falsification to equivocate the submission of Pamina to male authority en route to her elevation, or to pretend that the vanishment of the Queen of the Night, her Three Ladies, and their new defector-ally Monostatos amid thunder, lightning, and storm (“Wir alle gestürzet in ewige Nacht“) is anything other than the final elimination of feminine influence^(III) from the makeup of the fully matured person, male or female. That’s what the work says. The same goes for the matter of class, seen as a question of natural selection. Tamino and Pamina belong to royalty to begin with; they are already more qualified than others (Papageno and Papagena, for instance) to ascend to Enlightenment and to one day rule over a new, more wisely governed Kingdom. We are not all equally gifted. Some have the Right Stuff, inborn, and others do not, and it’s for the best if we acknowledge that. (It’s not that Papageno cannot fulfill his dream; he doesn’t have the dream, exactly the contrary, and is shrewd enough to know his place.) That, too, is what the work says.