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« War es das, was das gebildete Publikum erlebte: Hübsche Musik und Dekorationen, und der Rest eine unglaubliche Farce? Und wenn ja – was sah und hörte dann das einfache Volk, das doch die eigentliche Zielgruppe des Vorstadttheaters bildete? (Was sich auch in den niedrigen Eintrittspreisen widerspiegelte: 17 Kreuzer im Parterre, 7 Kreuzer in der Galerie, während eine kleine Loge für vier Personen 2 Gulden 30 Kreuzer kostete.) War es Mozart – wie bei seinen ersten Klavierkonzerten für Wien – auch hier darum gegangen, »eben das Mittelding zwischen zu schwer, und zu leicht« zu komponieren, wie er am 28. Dezember 1782 an den Vater geschrieben hatte? Sollte auch die Musik der Zauberflöte, wie neun Jahre zuvor die der Konzerte, »sehr brillant – angenehm in die Ohren« sein, – »Natürlich, ohne in das leere zu fallen – hie und da – können auch kenner allein satisfaction erhalten – doch so – daß die nichtkenner damit zufrieden seyn müssen, ohne zu wissen warum«?
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It is extremely difficult, probably impossible, to consider the Magic Flute independently of its interpretations. Perhaps a diary entry by Count Karl von Zinzendorf from 6 November 1791 most aptly describes the work, because it is so matter-of-fact: “La musique et les décorations sont jolies, le reste une farçe incroyable.” Was that what the cultivated public experienced – pretty music and scenery, and the rest an incredible farce? And if so, what did the common folk see and hear? They were the actual target audience of the suburban theatre, as is reflected in the low admission prices: 17 kreuzer in the stalls, 7 kreuzer in the gallery, while a small box for four people cost 2 gulden 30 kreuzer. Or was it important for Mozart – as in the case of his first piano concertos for Vienna – to compose music that was “a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult”, as he wrote his father on 28 December 1782? Should the music of the Magic Flute, like that of the concertos nine years earlier, be “very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why”? It would have been the same approach that Schikaneder adopted in his theatrical work, as Julius Friedrich Knüppeln observed in 1793 in his Vertraute
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