Next week, at 85, Peter Brook, one of the world’s most original and cerebral directors, will present a ninety-minute version of The Magic Flute in London’s Barbizon. Brook’s work has always been characterized by its clarity, lightness and distilled elegance. His production will do without pantomimic spectacle, without big processions and trios of boys and ladies. Instead, the stage will be bare except for bamboo poles and minimal props. A young cast of nine singers will deliver the work – sung in German with dialogue in French – crucially situated in front of a piano.
As Brook wryly says: “If you come to this production looking for something that will slam you in the eyes, you’ve come to the wrong address…. Every choice I’ve ever made has been dictated by a formless hunch rather than by strict logic. With The Magic Flute, I’ve always felt that there was a work of real quality that has been submerged through no fault of the composer. The librettist, Schikaneder, obviously wanted a big popular show with plenty of scenic effects. But he and Mozart were both freemasons and, at a time when the movement was regarded by the Archduke as a potentially subversive political threat, sought to create an opera that is about spiritual trial and initiation. For Mozart, freemasonry represented his intuition that there was something finer and purer in life beyond the material and the everyday.”
If Brook is deeply attentive to the music, he also champions Schikaneder who, he points out, was no lightweight buffoon, but a shrewd Viennese actor-manager who had once played Hamlet.
For Brook, in opera, the words come first.
“I have an unshakeable conviction,” he says, “that never in history has a guy written the tunes, and someone has come along and put the words to them. I once asked Richard Rodgers whether he had any tunes in his bottom drawer waiting for a lyric. He told me that it was only when he heard the lyricist’s precise words, such as Oscar Hammerstein’s ‘O, what a beautiful morning,’ that the melodies emerged. And in Mozart, the music is drawn to the surface by the words.”
Source: Guardian, March 17
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
In his introduction to a performance of The Magic Flute on CD, J.D. McLatchy writes: “Schikaneder’s libretto has often been derided. Some have disliked its mix of high and low, or criticized the story as a muddle that switches its emphasis halfway through. One critic went so far as to call it “one of the most absurd specimens of that form of literature in which absurdity is regarded as a matter of course.”
As a “consumer”, it is that absurdity which drives me to listen to the music, where the “silliness” of it all is less obvious, instead of suffering through the frou-frou and frippery of a full on-stage production.
If anyone can mount The Magic Flute so that we don’t have to work so hard at willingly suspending our disbelief, it’s Peter Brook. He’s a master at taking fantastical material and bringing it into the realm of human experience we can identify with. He succeeded brilliantly with his stripped down acrobatic version of Midsummer Night’s Dream in the 1970′s. I wish I could be in London to see how he transforms The Magic Flute at the Barbizon.
Yes, so do I.
I wonder what clever reason Brook has for doing the dialogue in French…..
Yes indeed — that’s what I have always heard: Prima le parole! Words first. But when I checked I found out that Salieri appears to have disagreed with an opera titled: Prima la musica et poi le parole. Go figure….. And then again there is Strauss Capriccio which sort of deals with the same question.
Prima La Carola, seconda Le Eric
Prima la Carola, second0 Le Eric
In a review published in the Radio Times, 18 March 1927, George Bernard Shaw wrote that Mozart “…with the unscrupulous moral versatility of a born dramatist, turned around to cast a halo of divinity round Sarastro, setting his words to the only music yet written that woul not sound out of place in the mouth of God.”
I am dazzled by your erudition.
But it certainly cannot compare with mine. I dug up this quote from Shaw:
“Brahms’s music is at bottom only a prodigiously elaborated compound of incoherent reminiscences, and it is quite possible…to struggle with his music for an hour at a stretch without giving such an insight…as half a dozen bars of a sonata by Mozart.” (1888)
However, much later, in 1936, Shaw recognized that it was unnecessary to be anti-Brahms in order to be pro-Wagner. He footnoted that review in an anthology: “The above hasty (not to say silly) description of Brahms’s music will, I hope, be a warning to critics who know too much…. I had not yet got hold of the idiosyncratic Brahms. I apologize.”
QUOTE FROM: MUSIC AFTER 50
First the Words, Then the Music
by Carol Reynolds on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at at 7:05 am
Prof. Carol
My favorite sentence in all of music? That’s easy. Prima le parole, e dopo la musica. It means: “First the words, and then the music.” In terms of impact, it’s right up there with “A stitch in time saves nine” and “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Prima le parole, e dopo la musica refers to the order in which compositions with words were created, at least traditionally. The text writer (lyricist, in our lingo) would write or arrange the words, and then the composer would take it up to write the music.
There were practical reasons for this. Throughout European history, official censors had to approve the words first. If you ever saw the Academy Award-winning movie Amadeus (1984), directed by Peter Shaffer, you might remember when the young Mozart gets into trouble because he’s composed an opera (The Marriage of Figaro) to an unapproved text—a play banned because of its disruptive elements.
Back then, a composer wasn’t fool-hardy enough to touch a text until it had the official seal of approval from the court, theater, or church censors. There was even a popular musical comedy written by Anton Salieri, Mozart’s rival, that spoofs the whole process. In Prima la musica, e poi le parole (First the Music, Then the Words, 1786), a court poet is suffering from writer’s block. But the monarch is waiting for his new opera! So, the composer finishes the music first, and the poet endures the irritation of fitting his text to already completed music.
How about in modern times, when court censors aren’t in charge of the arts? Even today, many composers prefer prima le parole. A composer looks at a text the way a seamstress looks at a pattern. From the outline of the text, a composer imagines the color, form, and flair of the music.
Authors and composers do collaborate, of course. In larger works, like operas, there’s endless tweaking before everyone’s happy. Some of the rewriting is text-based, but some of it is musical, or practical. If the star singer demands two solo arias in the second act, then those arias get added. If a line turns out not to “sing well,” then something will be rewritten, whether words or music.
If you’ve studied how a musical (America’s favorite form of opera) comes to Broadway, you know that a lot is left on the cutting floor. One of my favorite reference books, The Collectors Guide to American Musical Theater, by David Hummel (Scarecrow Press, 1984), lists virtually every American musical you can think of. In great detail, it traces the many versions necessary until the musical finally succeeded (or flopped). Imagine if there’d been Special Features and Director’s Cuts on DVD back when Rodgers and Hammerstein were haggling over their masterpieces!
But can the text writer and the composer be the same person? Yes, absolutely. The 19th-century genius Richard Wagner gets the credit for upsetting this apple cart in the world of opera. Writing his own words (librettos) for his music dramas was one of the most radical things he did. And he did it in order to be in full control of his creations—that sounds modern, doesn’t it? It was bound to happen, and there are plenty of examples after Wagner.
But just remember: the talent for writing great words is not identical with the ability to write great music.
If you wanted to write a song, would you write the lyrics yourself (or have someone write them for you) – and then focus on the music? Or would you craft a melody first, and then seek the words? Give it a try both ways, even if it’s only a line or two, and see how it works for you!
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Many years ago René Dupére the now-famous composer of LE CIRQUE DU SOLEIL (of which I was the first Director) brought me a charming melody which was of a length to fit one stanza. I said “that’s really a song – if you write a middle-eight for it, I’ll write words”.
He did – and I did. The song is called WORDS… It’s still available, that is, if you’re a world-class singer!
Great comment – thank you.
This is off topic but I don’t want to leave the impression that I think that everything GBS wrote was admirable. Here are three of his fatuous remarks:
On 13 May 1889, writing about that week’s celebration of the French Revolution, he said, “If, however, we are to have a Revolution, do not let us sing the Marseillaise. The incurable vulgarity of that air is a disgrace to the red flag….”
On 6 December 1893, writing about a recital lecture given by a Mrs. Liebich, he sad, “Now it is one thing to be a lady and quite another thing to be a lecturer. Lecturing is in its own nature a hopelessly unladylike pursuit. It is not ladylike to monopolize the whole conversation for an hour….”
Finally, one that some might agree with. On 7 February 1890, in writing about diction, he said, “The elocutionary man is the most insufferable of human beings…. Of course, if you are a professional humbug – a bishop or a judge, for instance – then the case is different; for the salary makes it seem worth your while to dehumanize yourself and pretend to belong to a different species….”
But his style was always flawless.
At the risk of inconveniencing a moribund equine, one small additional observation. I accept the conclusion that in creation, text usually comes before music. But in the long run it seems to me it’s the music that pays the rent. (I’ve argued this, unsuccessfully for the most part, with a lot of opera buffs.) Try this (admittedly absurd) thought experiment: on the one hand, Mozart’s Magic Flute without words, or with nonsense syllables. On the other hand, Schikaneder’s libretto as a stage play, without music. Which would you buy a ticket to see and hear?
Curmudgeon offers a perspective based on a different meaning of “first” — instead of a temporal relationship between words and music, (first-second) he suggests a difference in quality (better-worse). The experiment suggested would I suspect find very few takers for the words only version. On the other hand, Wilde’s text for Salome is pretty readable stuff even without Strauss’ music. Posted to keep targeting the defunct nag with my pedal extremity. Sorry but silliness appeals to me right now.
Could it be true that there have also been memorable performances of the RING without music?