The Cambridge Companion to The Magic Flute

Premiered in 1791, The Magic Flute remains Mozart's most-performed opera worldwide. This Companion covers historical context, musical analysis, critical approaches and reception history, and engages with current debates including the representation of gender, race and exoticism. It provides an essential framework for understanding the opera today.

Since its premiere in 1791, The Magic Flute has been staged continuously and remains, to this day, Mozart''s most-performed opera worldwide. This comprehensive, user-friendly, up-to-date critical guide considers the opera in a variety of contexts to provide a fresh look at a work that has continued to fascinate audiences from Mozart''s time to ours. It serves both as an introduction for those encountering the opera for the first time and as a treasury of recent scholarship for those who know it very well. Containing twenty-one essays by leading scholars, and drawing on recent research and commentary, this Companion presents original insights on music, dialogue, and spectacle, and offers a range of new perspectives on key issues, including the opera''s representation of exoticism, race, and gender. Organized in four sections – historical context, musical analysis, critical approaches, and reception – it provides an essential framework for understanding The Magic Flute and its extraordinary afterlife.