August 19

We continued our discussion of Mozart in class today. Mozart came to Vienna in 1781 and became a member of the free masonry. The free masons was a group founded in the 18th century that consisted of a group of men whose goal it was to achieve the social equality of men. This group was a product of the Enlightenment, but its members still believed in the inferior rationality of women. In class, we also talked about Mozart’s opera, “The Magic Flute” (Die Zauberflote), because we were going to go see it that night. The opera centers around Tamino, a prince, who has to perform certain tasks along with his buddy, Papageno, in order to be able to be with his love interest Pamina. Pamina was supposedly taken from her mother, the Queen of the Night, by Sarastro. In the end, Tamino ends up with Pamina, Papageno ends up with Papagena, and Sarastro turns out to be a good guy while the Queen of the Night and her three servants turn out to be bad. After talking about the opera in class, I was excited to go see it because I had never been to an opera before and I wanted to see everyone all dressed up, as well. After getting to the opera house (called the Theater an der Wien), across the street from the Naschmarkt, it took us awhile to get to our seats. By the way, the seats were very uncomfortable. I think this is to deter people from falling asleep during the performance. The opera turned out to be very different from what I was expecting, but I still enjoyed it. I was expecting a very formal production with elaborate costumes and sets, but the costumes and set were more simple and modern. I think this allowed for more humor in the performance. I was glad that I read the libretto of the opera before I saw it, because they sang in German and I would have had no idea what was going on otherwise. Overall, I enjoyed my first visit to the opera. The opera house was very cute too. It was smaller than I thought it would be, but it just made for a more intimate experience.
The German word of the day is moeglich, which means “possible”.