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The Magic Flute.

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First UK edition. Auden composed his translation of the Magic Flute libretto in 1956, in honour of the bicentenary of Mozart’s birth, working in conjunction with his friend and erstwhile lover, the American translator and librettist Chester Kallman (1921–1975). The dialogue is written in verse, as it seemed to the translators ‘the right medium for the spoken word in an opera magica; it obliterates any trace of verismo, and it keeps the comic passages within decent bounds’ (Preface, p. 15).

Bloomfield and Mendelson A37b.

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