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A Magic Summer with The Magic Flute

Kaye Terry Hanson

My granddaughter, Sadie, is nearly four. She and I drive to California in my car to spend a week in a rented house at the beach with extended family. Her parents and two brothers follow in another car. With Sadie buckled in her car seat behind me, I look for ways to entertain her as I drive. "Want to hear a story about a princess?" I ask. Of course she does. I slip my newly purchased CD of The Magic Flute into the car stereo system and begin. "A prince wanders into an unknown land where a scary monster snake lives. When the prince sees the snake, he is so scared that he faints. Three mysterious women kill the snake and tell their queen about the handsome prince." I look in the rear-view mirror and see that Sadie is hooked. "Then what happens?" she asks.

"A funny man named Papageno, dressed all in feathers,finds the prince just as he wakes up. The prince sees the dead snake and asks who killed it, and Papageno lies and says that he did. The three mysterious women hear Papageno lie about the snake and punish him by putting a lock on his mouth." I look at Sadie in the mirror. "Listen, Sadie, here's how Papageno sings with a lock on his mouth." I punch the CD forward, and Papageno hums, "Hm, hm, hm, hm. . . ." Sadie laughs out loud and begs me to play that part over and over again. I do, and I wonder at the understanding of a little girl. I would never have known a story about an opera when I was a child.

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In our small southern Utah town, opera was laughed at. Never mind that our pioneer ancestors had built afine structure named The Opera House. Never mind that every Christmas the Beaver Second Ward presented a full-voiced, full-blown, and probably perfectly respectable production of Handel's Messiah. Never mind that most of us took piano lessons and learned our quota of piano pieces written by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Opera was silly. Everybody knew that. It was weird, long, and most of all, too hard to understand. So we didn't understand it. We made fun of it, and none of us knew anybody who didn't.

How is it that such a beginning could lead to my learning to enjoy opera today-often listening to it as the music of choice on a long car trip-or to my teaching and sharing opera stories with my grandchildren?

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In Las Vegas, Sadie climbs into her parents' car, and her brother Zachary buckles in behind me. Encouraged by Sadie's interest in The Magic Flute story, I also tell it to Zachie, who is six . Zachie has a natural affinity for music-he always has-and he responds delightedly to the vocal gymnastics of the dark queen.

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Two periods in my life were important in my learning about opera. Following my freshman year at Brigham Young University, I returned to my old job as a summer lifeguard at the Beaver Municipal Pool. The new manager had justfinished hisfirst year as the music teacher at the high school. He loved music, of course, and had an elaborate (for those days) stereophonic record player with gigantic speakers and a wonderful collection of classical long-playing records-including opera scores-that he willingly shared. As we listened, he would say, "Notice how the violins sound like they're weeping" or "Hear the triumph in the trumpets here?" or "This passage means that the lovers are parting."