My understanding
Tamino is the main character in the play. He is the prince of an emperor. However, he gets chased by a monster and is fainted. Three ladies see this and save him from the danger. Tamino wakes up and thinks it’s Papageno who saves him from the monster. But then, the three ladies appear and tell him it’s them who save him and give him a portrait of the queen’s daughter, Pamina, saying she is being slaved by Sarastro. Since Tamino sees the picture, he falls in love with Pamina. The queen comes out with thunders and commands him to save her daughter from the evil figure by giving him a gift to fight for. Tamino consents and Papageno follows him. They set on the journey of saving Pamina.
One theme of this play is love at the first sight in which the main character Tamino falls in love with Pamina when he first saw the portrait of Pamina. He thinks Pamina is the one that he will love forever and protect her from everything. That’s the reason why he goes to Sarastro’s palace and wants to get Pamina from there. Another theme of this play will be a brotherhood. Tamino and Papageno get to know each other when they start their journey to find Pamina. And they use the Magic flute and bell to catch the position. They also get the purified test together in which the only way to get the Sarastro’s place is to get the test, so they work together as they are brothers and Tamino always warns Papageno to pay attention to his actions. Sometimes, they remind each other not to talk or eat.
Also, another big theme is the magic flute, the magic. In this story, magic is a major thing that causes everything to happen. If there is no magic, the main character, Tamino will die in the first place. And if he doesn’t have that magic flute to help him save Pamina, they can never get through it.
Good vs. Bad is another theme that she emphasizes. At first, When I saw the play, I thought the Queen of the Night will be the good queen that wants to save her daughter from the bad guy, Sarastro. However, when I watched the entire or half of the play, the bad guy suddenly change to the Queen of the Night. She wants to control her daughter because Pamina’s dad puts Pamina in the place, so she wants to fight against Sarastro so she could be the strongest. So this lead the next theme who should we trust? Should we trust the Queen of the Night or Sarastro? Which one is the good guy that wants us to believe in?
In Taymor’s version, we can clearly see something that she adds to in order to let the audiences to distinguish. In the book, she says she adds deeper stories inside of the play. Not only that, she also improves the color of the stage, so that the children can also watch the play together with their parents.
Also, she creates puppets. In this version, she adds more puppets faces. From the picture of the three ladies, she paints their faces black and those masks are above their heads. When they need to have a flying and singing part, they will immediately take out their masks and swing the masks from right to left in order to show the dancing. Moreover, different ladies have a different facial expression( so their masks are totally different).
Taymor also reveals the darkness of the play. In the Met website, it states that she is more willing to expose the darker face, the one that is hidden in the innocent shell of the unruly libretto but apparent in the exquisite subtlety of the music, so by doing this, she creates colorful staging in this play. Such as the Queen of the Night, when she appears on stage, the stage changes into black or dim color and this states the person’s dark faces. Also, she also painted the bad guy with black faces and weird atmosphere. To show the audience that the Queen of the Night couldn’t live or doesn’t have much power anymore, she uses a moth outfit because once the Queen of the Night couldn’t receive any power, the layer will become less and eventually everything will disappear.
Taymor also combines the Asian culture in some way through the play. One of her favorite things is to cross bridges in which combine the culture altogether. Taymor sent 4 years in Indonesia, and not only Indonesia, she also went to Japan to study the pre-Bunraku style of puppet. These cause her to put more Asian culture into this play, for example, she puts shadow play in the beginning while Papageno is coming out to catch the birds. Also, the faces of the majority characters are painting to white color, in which similar to the Bunraku masks. On people’s face, she adds more makeup like some of the characters, she puts green or red on them.
She makes Papageno less annoying in some way by saying funny quotes and interaction with audiences so he will not be that annoying when he wants to go back and talking too much with people.
Taymor also adds more dance sections in the play such as ballet. When the birds are coming out from Papageno’s bell, they start to dance with Papageno’s music.
She puts more colorful cloth for each of the characters, and from the book, it says every character represents nature in the environment. For example, the Queen of the Night represents the moon and her outfit was all white to show she is the moon from the dark background. Also, Papageno has special birds outfits. His outfit is not only like a bird, but also made like a cagelike rattan in which can control himself. For Sarastro, he represents the sun, so Taymor gets a feeling of the emperors in China that they normally wore a golden yellow robe. That emphasizes the importance of the Enlightenment of the emperor.
Moreover, she also builds some huge kites for showing the bears to the audience, maybe it’s to show the powerful, but also how fragile and moveable it will be. Same as the monster, in the beginning, it is also made up of a huge kite.
She highlights a lot of things in this play. To show the power of the Queen, she makes her like a moth. When she is angry, her wing is peeling off and the whole costume becomes red.
Taymor also highlights the number of 3. When the three ladies come up, there are three of them. There are also three spirits in this play. Also, the other characters on the back also hold up a triangular shape to say it’s three. People are coming up to the stage with three. I think Taymor wants to say the triangle is an important theme in this play.
The costume for each one of them has different natural relations. For example, the Queen of the Night represents the Moon. Sarastro represents the sun in the air. Papageno is the air in which he has a beak that represents he can fly. Tamino is the fire. Sarastro looks like a Chinese Emperor with a yellow robe, so it also represents the sun. Tamino looks like a Japanese prince, and he is always hopeful to the things that happen next from his action, so he represents the fire. He has some passion to do things. Papageno just has a green jumpsuit and a beak on his head, so this kind of have an interpretation of flying and the air. The Queen of the Night looks like a moth, and in the night, people can only see the white round object up in the air, so a white moth can easily represent the moon.
The lighting mainly puts the light on the main characters who is singing, so people can easily know who is the main characters and why they are saying. The kaleidoscope during the play varied many times. At first, there is no kaleidoscope and that represents the darkness of the time and no hopes are around. As they start to get to the qualified test, the kaleidoscope changes. Taymor wants to bring lights to the dimension and layer the characters, she wants the audience to see the visceral level, so she works closely with the visual changes on stage about the kaleidoscope. In order to do those, she and Tsypin which is a set designer work.
Taymor also utilizes some Asian techniques as I mentioned before. She combines Asian culture with this play. She uses Bunraku masks to combine the cultures altogether. Such as people’s faces. Most of the character is painted into white, and it just looks like white masks that people wear. Then, the characters put on large makeup on their faces. Also, she also acknowledges and uses some Chinese technique as well, for example, Papageno’s shadow play was from China. The birds are flying in the sky, and Papageno is trying to catch them.
Also, the three ladies painted their faces black and they had a mask above their head. I think it might be called like Shairmen in Japan in which storytelling the story and represents the musician in the play.
Monostatos (William Ferguson), the inept villain who tries to kidnap Pamina, can be seen as a parodic bat, but he reminded me of Pengy from "Batman." He's obscene – he flashes Pamina by opening his cape -- ungainly, and folds-of-fat pudgy, but he is served by some half-naked, macho henchmen who seem a little dangerous. They are quickly routed, but it's an interesting moment.
The Queen of Night is a pure archetype, a silvery monarch in Japanese-inspired makeup with six slowly moving giant wings behind her. She reappears later in scarlet and black, now evil but even more mesmerizing.
The Queen of Night is a pure archetype, a silvery monarch in Japanese-inspired makeup with six slowly moving giant wings behind her. She reappears later in scarlet and black, now evil but even more mesmerizing.
Three pale white spirits of the air with long beards fly in and out of the action, and the Queen has three spiritual attendants, who slay the dragon after Tamino faints. Taymor has been experimenting with the attendants' costumes for over a decade. Their majestic height is created by white masks worn atop their heads while their faces are blacked out with make-up.
Sarastro and the Queen of the Night, are located between the sun and the moon. They are clearly described in a serving battle between good and evil; the young lovers Tamino and Pamina are tested, grow, and become wise through their adventures; Papageno and Papagena always concern about their physical need such as food, drink or having a wife. These are similar to normal human beings. During the tested, they are not eager to pass it but wanted something more. Taymor makes this play more spiritually by respecting or changing less in the storyline.
Taymor was inspired by the Asian culture a lot. she traveled through Japan and Indonesia from 1975 until 1979. In Indonesia, she spent four years there. Then she developed a mask/dance company, Teatr Loh, consisting of Japanese, Balinese, Sundanese, French, German and American actors, musicians, dancers, and puppeteers. After college, she studied in Japan for several years to learn more about Bunraku masks and visually oriented theatre. So in this play, we can see a lot of Japanese influences, such as the entire costumes and the overall background, she used colorful costumes for characters to better represents them as their own. For example, Papageno has its own green color costume, and cage-like shell to debar himself from passion, and other attractions. Also, he has a beak on his head, so as an audience we can see that he must represent something in the sky. Moreover, she puts in the Bunraku masks into the characters. Character’s faces were painted into black or white to show the culture of Japan. Maybe she wants to tell us the good side and the bad side of the facial masks. As I mentioned before, such as the kite form of animals, the shadow play. She was influenced by those so much, so when she puts it to this play.
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