I would present Die Zauberflöte as itself not to advocate for all its values and possible meanings, but because I believe all works of art should be allowed to be themselves, to maintain their integrity and occupy their unique places in the world. I believe they best serve us by offering their own truths and beauties, and allowing us to interrogate, to accept or reject in whole or in part. And, further, because I am repelled by the smugness of generational moral superiority, and appalled by the thought that our presumably advanced selves cannot receive with equanimity the most eloquently expressed values of our own cultural legacy out of fear of their influence. I want to trust our ability to be affected by works of art and to incorporate them into our own intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, and moral sensibilities. If we cannot, I am forced to accept the currently voguish notion of a great, widespread fragility, not all of it white and/or male.

As I have indicated, the Met’s entertainment that calls itself Die Zauberflöte made the second of the choices I outlined above. To catalogue its inventions would be tiresome and pointless. But to offer a few samples, in roughly ascending order of importance:

∗ The Three Boys, though still sung by boys, were transformed via party-trick costume, makeup, and movement into three bent, arthritic old men—a perversely adversarial move (“Something sick about that,” said my seatmate). And they made a grey, sickly sound.

∗ Monostatos was white (though I’m quite sure I heard him sing “weil ein Schwarzer hässlich ist,” “weiss ist schön,” etc. just a couple of the many flagrant textual contradictions that any auteurial production must simply override)—a tall, slim, youngish, business-suit-and-tie person resembling a corporate junior executive of the 1960s, or a stand-up comic’s version of same (I kept thinking of Orson Bean). Weirdly, his punishment (seventy-seven lashes on the soles of the feet, usually left unshown), became a mini shock effect, as he hobbled across the width of the stage on bloodied underpinnings.

∗ Sarastro’s brotherhood (“community,” in McBurney’s scenario) was transformed into a buttoned-down version of the very sort of modern benevolent society mentioned above—something to be mocked, its dignity and ideals exposed as nothing more than pretensions. It bore a more than passing resemblance—both in itself and in the audience attitude it invites—to the Grail brotherhood of François Girard’s Parsifal.

∗ The star-flaming Queen of the Night, of whom no mortal can boast of having seen (like Isis herself), was a cranky old lady in a wheelchair who somehow eluded her caretakers to give us her two big, youthfully athletic arias.

∗ At the end, the Queen and her retinue are not blown away into eternal night. Instead, foxy old Sarastro, who has divined their purpose, ” . . . descends on them all, scattering them in all directions, except for the queen, who collapses before him powerless.” (McBurney’s words, my italics.) Then, “Sarastro raises up the Queen of the Night and banishes the darkness.” The “community” enters, and the finale becomes a Kumbaya moment, the Queen beaming out at us from her wheelchair. We didn’t mean it! We love that batty ol’ Queen! Don’t know what happened to her Ladies, or that guy with the bloody feet and his “henchmen” (don’t be calling them “slaves”!). Probably around here somewhere.