Mozart Loved His `Flute' - Even On His Deathbed

It was the last day of September in the last year of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life, and the composer himself was conducting (from the fortepiano) when "The Magic Flute" had its 1791 world premiere in Vienna. The production must have seemed like a family affair: Mozart's sister-in-law, Josepha Hofer, was the Queen of the Night; many in the cast were his personal friends; and his librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, performed the comic role of Papageno (Schikaneder's older brother was one of the three Priests).

The most reliable accounts we have of the opening run of "Flute" are Mozart's own letters to his wife, Constanze, who was off in Baden "taking the cure":

"I have just come from the opera; - it was just as full as usual. The duetto `Mann und Weib etc.' and the Glockenspiel in the 1st Act had to be repeated as usual - also in the 2nd Act the trio with the boys - but what pleases me the most is the silent applause - one can readily see how much this opera continues to grow."

A few days later, Mozart reports how he sneaked backstage during one performance and played the glockenspiel during one of Schikaneder's speeches (as the comic Papageno), teasing Schikaneder by playing at the wrong time, until "he struck his glockenspiel and said, `Shut up,' whereupon everybody laughed."

Merry, contented and industrious, hard at work on the Clarinet Concerto, Mozart was at the top of his form. These October, 1791, letters are, however, the last ones in Mozart's hand that survive. By the end of the month, the 35-year-old composer was already feeling ill; by Dec. 5, he was dead, of what contemporary medical sources have analyzed as rheumatic fever, kidney failure, cerebral hemorrhage or broncho-pneumonia - or all of the above. He left behind a wife who mourned him with apparent sincerity, and two sons - the only survivors of the couple's six children - who died without known heirs.

During the final illness, "The Magic Flute" was never far from Mozart's mind; one report has Mozart attempting to sing "Der Vogelfanger bin ich ja," Papageno's introductory aria, from his deathbed.

The opera proved to be the last triumph of a life that was over far too soon.