Sir, – May I add a Dublin dimension to Patrick Freyne's account ("A day rehearsing an opera for farters and drunks", October 17th) of the lowbrow origins of The Magic Flute ?
With the opening night fast-approaching and the opera not finished, Mozart was locked in the summer house of Vienna’s Freihaus Theater until it was completed. A ready supply of wine, oysters and sopranos increased Mozart’s productivity – the overture being completed with two days to spare. Whether this frenetic activity contributed to his early death just two months later is not known.
Mozart conducted the premiere of The Magic Flute from the fortepiano with his sister-in-law, Josepha Hofer, in the demanding coloratura role of the Queen of the Night. The polyglot, German polymath, Carl Ludwig Giesecke, the stage manager, took the part of the First Slave.
Giesecke was later appointed professor of mineralogy at the Royal Dublin Society.
After settling in Ireland, where he lived for 20 years until his death, Giesecke claimed that he, not Emmanuel Schickaneder, wrote the libretto of The Magic Flute. Though the claim has never been fully substantiated, the accurately described alchemical allegories in the opera would have come easily to a trained scientist.
Giesecke lived in Hardwicke Place in Dublin and was buried in the adjoining churchyard of St George’s Church, where a memorial plaque, making no mention of his operatic career, was erected in his honour.
I write this letter on the site of the Freihaus Theater; at the door of my apartment a charming stained-glass window, “Dedicated to the Genius Mozart”, marks the spot where he wrote his greatest opera. – Yours , etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY,
Vienna.