Basic Repertoire: The Queen of The Night
This article is part of the Basic Repertoire Project.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the most recognized composers of all time. Born in 1756 to a well-to-do Austrian family, his father, a composer himself, brought this prodigy forward to become the composer of some brilliant works.
As you know, child prodigies scare the hell out of me.
Mozart wrote a couple of great operas, one of them being The Magic Flute. His early works weren’t as well-received as his later ones, and this last opera of his is considered on of his greatest.
To understand the basics of an opera, it essentially is a stage play that is sung (so it’s a kind of musical), but with a classical orchestra and music from the time. Mozart was known for breaking traditions, and so he did by writing the first operas to be sung in German, and to be a proponent of comedy - yes, Mozart was quite a fun-loving guy.
In The Magic Flute, the story is pretty complex, and I don’t want to bore you with it (read it here). I just want to show you one short piece from ti that you might know already: The Queen of The Night’s second aria:
The scene depicts the queen of the night, showing her anger towards her daughter who isn’t following her orders.
A few key points:
- The high notes aren’t really sung, they’re actually whistled.
- The lyrics in English are:
The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,
Death and despair flame around me!
If Sarastro does not through you feel the pain of death,
Then you will be my daughter nevermore. (The high notes)
Disowned may you be forever,
Abandoned may you be forever,
Destroyed be forever
All the bonds of nature,
If not through you Sarastro becomes pale! (as death)
Hear, Gods of Revenge, hear a mother’s curse!
In operas, we differentiate musical pieces by the amount of people in it, and the type of accompaniment. In this case, we have the full orchestra playing while the singer sings an emotional melody.
This is the counterpart of a recitative, which is sung more like spoken word, to bring the story forward. The five minutes in the video don’t really take the story anywhere.
Another unique thing about this opera is the spoken part - usually operas don’t have spoken word by definition, but as I said: Mozart broke a few things.
How do you like it?
Tags: breaking_traditions, brilliant_works, child_prodigies, classical_orchestra, comedy, composers, magic_flute, opera, Prodigy, proponent, queen_of_the_night, second_aria, stage_play, wolfgang_amadeus_mozartRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Listening Lessons
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Jan 4, 2008 at 7:19 pm
[…] Musician has started his series of Basic Repertoire posts with the Queen of the Night’s flashy Aria from the Magic Flute. I didn’t realize there was a “whistle” register in the human […]
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