The Figure of Monostatos in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791)
Abstract
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1791 opera The Magic Flute produced and reproduced in the figure of Monostatos the racialized thinking of difference prevalent in the late eighteenth century. The “Moor” was non-white, Muslim, and supposedly sexually uncontrolled. The love of a black man for a white woman appeared as an unacceptable crossing of a boundary that was simultaneously created by these binary attributions.
Source
Everyone feels the joys of love,
Bill and coo, flirt,
snuggle, and kiss,
And I am supposed to avoid
love,
Because a Black is ugly,
Because a Black is
ugly.
Have I, then, been given no heart?
I am also fond of
girls,
I am also fond of girls,
Always to live without a
woman
Would truly be the blaze of hell,
Would truly be the
blaze of hell,
So, therefore I want, because I am
alive,
to bill and coo, kiss, be tender.
Dear, good moon,
forgive me,
A White took possession of me,
A White took
possession of me,
White is beautiful! I must kiss
her;
Moon, hide yourself from this!
Should it vex you too
much,
Oh, then close your eyes!
Oh, then close your
eyes!
Oh, then close your eyes!
Source of English translation: Kira Thurman for Black Central Europe, https://blackcentraleurope.com/sources/1750-1850/the-character-monostatos-in-mozarts-opera-the-magic-flute-1791/
Source of original German text: Emanuel Schickaneder and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Die Zauberflöte: Eine grosse Oper in zwey Aufzügen. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1794, no pagination.
Further Reading
Alyssa Hall, “Beyond the Glockenspiel. Teaching Race and Gender in Mozart’s Zauberflöte,” in Die Unterrichtspraxis /Teaching German. A Journal of the American Association of Teachers of German, Jg. 47, Heft 1 (2014), pp. 1–13.
Peter Martin, Schwarze Teufel, edle Mohren. Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 1993.