Die Zauberflöte at Opéra Bastille

We will never know how death revealed itself to Mozart and when and in what form it dispatched its messengers to him. Nevertheless, all the music composed in 1791, his last year, reveals to us that Mozart had heard and accepted their message without fear. Mozart loved exhilaration and could only live by it: exhilaration through love, work, or beauty. With the sense that little time remained, he resolved to leave this Earth exhausted, and consumed himself in his final works. Although utterly dissimilar, they would epitomise him entirely: La Clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte and the Requiem. Nourished by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, Die Zauberflöte is a parable around the main themes of the 18th century: nature and culture, education and morality, truth and religion. It expresses his convictions with an assertive naïveté and a touching simplification of the choices that every living human must make. It is this very simplicity which is so essential when time is short, when everything falters and one has to express oneself clearly and ensure that one is understood.
At once a magical tale, a popular comedy, a philosophical fable, a religious mystery, and a masonic opera, Die Zauberflöte finds its miraculous simplicity in the midst of all this chaos: it shows us pain and comfort, day triumphing over night and the path of love and fraternity which we must all follow if we wish to be worthy of humanity.