Zauberoper ( )

Zauberoper ( )
Peter Branscombe

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.30872
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

Updated in this version

updated bibliography, 6 February 2012

A term, used more often by music and theatre historians than by contemporary librettists and
composers, for a Singspiel with spoken dialogue that relies to an unusual extent on stage machinery
and spectacular effects. In theory the term could be applied to any opera that employs magic; but in
practice its use is normally restricted to the kind of magic Singspiel that was a staple of the Viennese
Megära, die förchterliche
Hexe 1763 Die Zauberflöte the most famous one.
The Wenzel Müller-Perinet adaptation, Megera (1806
Kaspar der Fagottist Oberon, are typical
examples of the recurrent motif of the hero being granted supernatural aids to enable him to rescue a
woman in peril. The Kauer-Hensler Das Donauweibchen (1798), an Ondine variant long popular in
German lands, inverts the usual formula by having magic separate the earthly lovers.

Numerous operas employing magic to a more or less marked extent continued to be written and
Der Schmied
von Gent (1932
Ring, and the Strauss-
Hofmannsthal Die Frau ohne Schatten and Die ägyptische Helena) in which, though magic plays an
important part, the emphasis is primarily on more exalted concerns

Bibliography
G. Weisstein Spemanns goldenes Buch des Theaters, ed. R.
Genée and others (Berlin, 1902, 2/ 1912)

O. Rommel, ed.: Barocktradition im österreichisch-bayrischen Volkstheater, 1: Die

Maschinenkomödie (Leipzig, 1935/R); 2: Die romantisch-komischen Volksmärchen (Leipzig,
1936/R)

O. Rommel: Die Alt-Wiener Volkskomödie (Vienna, 1952)

P. Branscombe: W.A. Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (Cambridge, 1991)

Page 1 of 2
Printed from Grove Music Online. Grove is a registered trademark. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an

Subscriber: Conservatory of China; date: 26 February 2022

Zauberoper ( )

B. Heinel: Die Zauberoper: Studien zu ihrer Entwicklungsgeschichte anhand ausgewählter

Beispiele von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Freiburg, 1993)

D.J. Buch: Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: the Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical
Theatre (Chicago, 2008)

More on this topic

Zauberoper (opera) <http://oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/
9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000907811> in Oxford Music Online <http://
oxfordmusiconline.com>

Page 2 of 2
Printed from Grove Music Online. Grove is a registered trademark. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an

Subscriber: Conservatory of China; date: 26 February 2022