No deep emotions there, no profound psychological revelations, and you could see it was written decades ago, but I still enjoyed it very much. The opera and it's inhabitants once again form a tidy little group of childlike adults, each more eccentric than the last and as a whole a not entirely unadorable little troup. The music is by Herr Wolfgang Amade Mozart, Kapellmeister, an actual I[mperial] and R[oyal] Chamber Composer. a] The work premiered on 30 September 1791 at Schikaneder's theatre, the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, just two months before the composer's premature death.

When I flipped through the book at the library the cover told me this was the story of beautiful dark eyed princess who has shrugged off her royal duties and taken up the life of theatre and how she meets and falls in love with a handsome and rich English businessman. Guy reminds me a lot of Rom from A Company of Swans, another hero who can accomplish anything by sheer force of will. As Branscombe documents, the earlier performances were often of highly altered, sometimes even mutilated, versions of the opera (see Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith). For extensive discussion of the spread of The Magic Flute and its performance traditions, see Branscombe 1991, ch.Anyway, if you are wanting a dazzling Cinderella type story written post or pre WWII with rich details of European history then read one of these two books by Eva Ibbotson.

Needless to say this was an uncomfortable pace - roughly a hundred-something pages an hour, which would be a little more than a page every minute, right? The soft meringues are then served floating on a pool of custard and if you are very lucky, some kitchen magician will have placed a brittle frizz of caramelized sugar atop it all. She disappears as Papageno asks for her name, and the three boys bring in food, the magic flute, and the bells, sent from Sarastro (Trio: " Seid uns zum zweiten Mal willkommen" / We welcome you a second time). But after the 4th or 5th time he becomes instantly, coldly enraged at something he imagines Tessa has done and ready to think the worst of her, I wanted to smack him. Ibbotson said she dislikes "financial greed and a lust for power" and often creates antagonists in her books who have these characteristics.Incognito princess is slumming as wardrobe mistress and intern and general factotum for the opera company that is always on the brink of bankruptcy. Tessa (who just happens to be an Italian princess) has dedicated herself as a maid of all work in the service of opera. However, we seldom see a heroine like Tessa in our current young adult romances today, which is a bit sad, because the story harks back to a time when innocence was cherished, and a style of writing now mainly nostalgic.