Robert Peters [[log in to unmask]] wrote:

>I have been asked to clarify why I think that the Magic Flutes libretto is
>racist and against women.  Following are quotations from the libretto in
>German and a translation into English.
>
>1) Racist:
>2) Against women:

I think you overinterpret.

In Mozarts time, and the whole way until the end of the world war, people
in Europe were suspicious towards foreginers.  Especially those who looked
different.  But what can I say about that?: My father grew up in a little
minervillage out in the Swedish country, and he has told me that when he
first saw a black man, he got scared stiff.  Does this make him a racist?
I could add that today he is the happy father of three more or less
darkhaired adoptive children (of whom I am one).

The (more or less) adverse quotations you come up with on blacks in
Zauberfloete, doesn't in any way tell that Mozart was a racist or that he
expressed racist ideas!  (And remember what "racist" actually means!  Keep
it diversed from xhenophobia!!).  As well you can say that Mozart just
included some of the thoughts that were common in the society he lived in.
But Mozart seems to have shown the ubiquitous attitude, to dissolve that
that was his own opinion in letting Papageno say, as Mr. Meyer pointed
out: "I've seen black birds, why not a black man?".  The opera isn't
racist.  But it is always possible to read in meanings in every sentence,
but we may not let yet another composer bear the label "racist" wrongfully.
I would say that in the case with Wagner also this is unfair, but of
slightly different reason.  The opera isn't racist.

For women it is a bit more complicated.  Mozart love women, but a very
few women, as he had a very special, and high ideal of what a (read: his)
womam should be like.  He didn't think that his wife Konstanze lived up to
this ideal, and therefore he said in public, and at several occasions, that
"she is nothing but a whore".  Still I don't see that "The Queen of the
Night" is representing bad or evil women in any way.  She is not a kind
rolefigure, but it is as Mr. Massa said, the people in the plays has to be
either men or women, and the time of evil characters in operas is past if
we are going to read in feminist/antifeminist redux in every role.

It is also wrong to claim that Wagner had adverse opinions on women btw.

Mats Norrman
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