The Queen of the Night offers her daughter Pamina to Tamino, but he has to bring her back from her father and priest Sarastro. She gives a magic flute to Tamino and magic bells to the bird hunter Papageno, who follows Tamino and wants to find a wife. The duo travels in a journey of love and knowledge.
We can tell this story was eating at Bergman's soul for a long time. During the 1960s Magnus Enhörning, head of the Swedish Radio, asked Bergman for possible projects and the director replied "I want to do The Magic Flute for television". Enhörning readily agreed and supported the project without hesitation. The characters of Frid and Petra in "Smiles of a Summer Night" (1955), and Johan and Alma in "Hour of the Wolf" (1968) pre-figure his conception of Papageno and Papagena, and Tamino and Pamina respectively in "The Magic Flute". The latter film includes a puppet-theater sequence of part of Act 1 of the opera.
I am not a huge opera fan by any means, and I appreciate the way Bergman did this. The whole showing the audience thing? The intermission with the actors being themselves? The use of sets? It is like inviting us out to a real opera without all the stuffy, socially awkward moments that may occur. Most people probably would have cut the music and adapted the story into a movie script. This actually seems better, more pure. We get all the best of a real show without having to go to one or pay the high ticket prices.
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