Wagner’s attitude towards the Paris-centred tradition of grand opéra and its German-language cousin, große Oper, was equivocal. On the one hand, he mercilessly dissects the shortcomings of the genres in his Zurich writings; on the other hand, borrowings are rife and a notable exemplar exists in Rienzi. After disentangling and contextualising that contradiction in relation to Wagner’s early works and writings, this chapter considers the tensions between municipal and international resources in staging ‘grand’ works, the shifting associations of German genre such as Singspiel, große romantische Oper, and große Oper, and the witness born to this by Wagner’s prose drafts for incomplete works such as Die Sarazenin and Friedrich I.

This chapter offers an account of the circumstances surrounding the creation of The Magic Flute and its earliest performances. Through an examination of the latest research and documentary evidence, alongside established accounts and early iconography, this essay considers how audiences may have experienced the opera in 1791. “The Magic Flute in 1791” thus contextualizes the genesis and earliest stagings of the work not as Mozart’s final opera, but rather as the product of a particular historical moment.

While the finales of The Magic Flute owe much to the standard model that Mozart drew upon in the finales of his Da Ponte operas, they also show features not typically seen in opera buffa finales. Three of these features can be clearly seen in the finales of Schikaneder’s earlier Singspiele at the Theater auf der Wieden. They are: the use of feierlich music (often in march style) for ceremonial, quasi-religious or magical scenes; greater attention to sets and set changes in Schikaneder’s lavish productions; and a looser, more episodic approach to the structure of a finale, with sharp changes in musical style that heighten the sense of separation from one section to the next. Though they resemble the finales of Schikaneder’s other Singspiele, Mozart’s Magic Flute finales are more effective, with superior musical invention and more sharply characterized dramatic moments.