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Jan Assmann, Die Zauberflöte: Oper und Mysterium. Munich: Hanser, 2005. 384 pp., with 38 illustrations and numerous musicological examples.
First-time viewers of Mozart's Zauberflöte most likely experience the same consternation as Prince Tamino when their initial expectations of a conventional "knight in shining armor" rescue of Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night, from the clutches of the (purportedly) evil sorcerer Sarastro are confounded. Thanks to the efforts of scholars such as Jacques Chailley (The Magic Flute, Masonic Opera [Paris, 1968; English translation by Herbert Weinstock, New York: Knopf, 1971]), a critical consensus has emerged that sees in the plot of Die Zauberflöte not only the triumph of light over darkness, reason over superstition that is a main goal of the European Enlightenment, but also specific elements of Masonic ritual. In this regard.Tamino becomes a candidate for initiation in a secret Society who needs to be disabused of his pre-conceptions of Sarastro and his fellow priests in the Temple of Wisdom.
What, then, does the most recent book of the Egyptologist Jan Assmann add to the already immense literature on Die Zauberflöte? The answer is contained within its short, but appropriately cryptic subtitle,...