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from Part III - Approaches and Perspectives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2023
The bafflingly eclectic exoticisms of The Magic Flute arise from at least three literary traditions at work in the libretto: seraglio or abduction opera (Tamino sets out heroically to rescue Pamina); The Arabian Nights (Papageno’s comic journey turns on wishes and their magical fulfilment), and a didactic, princely encounter with (some notion of) Egyptian antiquity (Act 2). A labile discourse of nature adds further complexity, encompassing the regulative and the remote, civilization and savagery. This chapter, treating exoticism not as a theme within the opera, but as what the opera is about, posits an over-arching notion of “Enlightened orientalism” (Srinivas Aravamudan). The opera offers both its fictional characters, and the audience, a series of potentially transformative encounters with (what is posited as) the ancient and original sources of culture. These encounters cut across, and sometimes problematize, distinctions of self and Other.
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