Word: bergman
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...Ingmar Bergman treats Mozart's opera with spirit, reverence and understanding. In this adaptation of The Magic Flute, the director makes the work his own without ever violating it. Mozart is renewed, enhanced; Bergman is triumphant...
Exuberant Confusion. Bergman first saw the opera when he was twelve and was so enthralled that he wanted to mount a production in his marionette theater (an idea that was finally thwarted because he could not afford the 78 r.p.m. records). The Magic Flute contains some of Mozart's most glorious music but has a truly unmanageable libretto. Staunch knights, knot-headed serfs, mythological animals and cunning spirits amble around, stumbling over plot threads about thwarted romance and Freemasonry. One of Bergman's accomplishments is to take all this rich confusion, condense it by about 40 minutes...
...Magic Flute is traditionally considered an exaltation of the power of love. It is also about the transcendence of art and the liberating force of imagination - themes Bergman underscores...
Papageno's bells, Tamino's magic flute are talismans against the darkness. For Bergman, they are forces, as certain and necessary as love, to hold back the night...
When Tamino and Pamina embrace at the end, Bergman has the magic flute fly from Tamino's hand into Sarastro's, a lovely metaphor of universal regeneration, both of life...