I’ve always wanted to see The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) in person instead of just listening to it on disc, given that it premiered on my birthday two hundred and two years earlier. However, before being in Germany I had never gotten the chance to see a live performance. On Christmas Day the Berlin State Opera (Staatsoper Berlin), which has been performing in Charlottenburg’s Schiller Theater for several years while its permanent home on Unter den Linden undergoes extensive renovation, offers a matinee “family performance” of Mozart’s famous 1791 work. As one might expect from an event geared towards families with children, the tickets are relatively cheap. I was willing to exchange what I assumed would be a loud theater full of chattering kids for a reasonable price.

Before walking into the theater I worried about how The Magic Flute would be staged. A recent trend in contemporary opera is for directors and set designers to attempt to “update” the classics, placing them into spaces where they don’t really fit. It’s difficult to merge an 18^th-century story with a WWII setting, and the soaring emotions of a 19^th-century opera (say, Puccini’s La Bohème or a work by Wagner) don’t quite meld with minimalist, industrial sets. Is it too much to ask that operas be operatic?

In that sense the Staatsoper’s production certainly delivers. The sets are based on the designs for an 1816 production of the opera, only 15 years after it originally premiered in Vienna. They are simply fantastic. Each and every backdrop has been hand-painted to produce a dream world— the banks of the Nile River dotted with palm trees at moonlight, a looming temple complex in the distance, and the swampy endlessness of a mythical forest. The addition of modern electrical lighting allows the sets to be particularly stunning. We can even clearly see the bright sunlight streaming between columns into a dark interior or the hazy, misty effects of a riverside twilight. The most stunning of all is the so-called “Star Dome,” a backdrop of glowing stars, originally designed for the 1816 production. The Queen of the Night, standing on a crescent moon and resting behind a screen of painted clouds, sings of her lost daughter in front of it. The costumes also show the influence of the early 19^th century. The women don’t wear the structured and fitted redingotes of the 18^th century, but instead flowing Empire gowns. The hero Tamino wears trousers and an overcoat, not the breeches and powdered wig of an earlier generation. The animals that come to listen to the music of the eponymous magic flute are neither mechanical creations nor special effects. The crocodiles, rabbits, horses, and wolves are actors in costume. It’s something unexpected in an era of fantastical special effects but it adds to the atmosphere of the performance, as we get a better sense of what an early audience may have seen on stage.

Not every element is positive, however; The Magic Flute was written in a very different time and place from the society we live in today. It can be a somewhat problematic work, and many viewers find it difficult to separate the beauty of the music from the more discomforting elements of the story. The opera is set in Egypt and features presumably African characters, one of whom, Monostatos, is a central villain. In fact he and Pamina, the white heroine of the story, are the only two characters whose races are specified. The libretto, which contains references to “wicked Moors” and portrays Monostatos as a traitor and attempted rapist, is often edited in the English-speaking world to reflect the differences between 18^th– and 21^st-century attitudes towards race.

There are of course also many more people of African descent in the United States and England than there are in Germany, and thus more sensitivity and acknowledgment of what may and may not be offensive. The Staatsoper performance was not edited, but perhaps it ought to have been. It may be faithful to original performances but it is difficult not to flinch and be uncomfortable when a man who is clearly of white German descent walks out onto the stage wearing blackface.

When I expressed my shock at seeing blackface in the 21^st century people were quick to insist that a white person painting their skin black only has racist implications in former colonies. According to the logic of the people I spoke to, blackface is racist in America because of slavery. It simply can’t be racist if a German does it, as Germany had no slavery. This viewpoint is not at all valid. Involvement in the slave trade may not have been as common as it was in other countries such as Britain or Spain, but many Germans were indeed slave traders. The German economy has been reliant on shipping and international trade for hundreds of years. During the 18^th and 19^th centuries and the height of European colonialism slavery would have been part of that economy. Germany was also a colonial power in Africa, where colonists openly bought and sold slaves until their defeat in WWI – less than a century ago. Even when some Germans know the history and cultural implications of blackface, it doesn’t bother them. To a German, blackface may be “just makeup,” as some of the people I spoke to suggested. But how can that possibly outweigh what it represents to many other people in the world?

After The Magic Flute ended the children and their parents left the theater, chattering happily about their favorite parts of the performance. As I walked back towards the train station alongside these families I couldn’t help but wonder. If German children are taught that blackface is “no big deal,” how will it affect their views as adults? The history of racism and colonialism is without question a complicated one, and may be difficult for children to comprehend. I understand demands for authenticity in art, and I understand that the role of Monostatos is itself problematic. However, updates are not inherently bad. Electric lighting didn’t exist in 1791, but that doesn’t stop modern opera companies from using it to enhance productions. Perhaps we should apply the same principle to characters and costume.