Opera Explained: die Zauberflöte (the Magic Fart) and Other Chestnuts
Hello Children, and you of the quotidian hoi polloi who don’t appreciate and/or understand Opera.
This is Milton Dross, at Opera Hall, here to set you straight.
Operas have stories, librettos they are called. Sometimes they are hard to follow.
Let me simplify a few of them. But wait, a spoiler: more often than not people die in the final scene, sometimes verrry slowly.
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In Pagliachi, Canio was married to Nedda, still the hottie she was when they first met in Clown College. This true crime adventure ends when he stabs her and her lover Silvio.
In Boris Goodenough, Mussorgsky’s story of a mediocre Russian Czar, Boris dies in the end too.
Verde’s La Triviata is about a woman who loses it when she relinquishes her title as world trivia champion and is reunited with her lost game partner, Alfredo, on her death bed.
Rigaletto was a hunchbacked court jester, who, with his brothers, Rigatoni, Rotini and Rotelle, were pioneers in inventing new pastas.
On to Mozart: Noze di Figaro is the story of Figaro, AKA the barber the Barber of Seville, who had an enormous nose, which often got in the way while he was cutting hair. He had a history of sticking his schnozz into everybody’s business, complicating everything.
Die Zauberflöte was the tale of the magic fart. When a guy by the name of Tamino tooted, sorrow became joy and people chirped like birds.
So you think Wagner is pretty heavy stuff? Think again. Die Meisterzinger was the story of Bavaria’s most famous stand-up comic, Lennie Bratwurst, famous for his zinger one-liners.
Then there was Lowengrin. The opera Lowen grin sings of a shining knight, known for his crooked smile, who arrives in a boat pulled by a swan, who was actually Gottfried, the brother of the woman he was to marry, whom she had murdered. The swan changes back into Gottfried before a dove replaces the swan/aka Gottfried and transports Lowengrin, crooked smile and all, off to the palace of the Holy Grail.
Maybe that crooked smile was really Wagner’s smirk.
Well, the fat lady has sung, its time to go, Join us again next week when the three tenors go for baroque.
