“Don’t leave out the serious aspects, but don’t forget the humor either!” This, according to August Everding, was the basic idea behind his staging of “The Magic Flute”, which premiered on 30 August 1978 at the Bavarian State Opera. He wanted his Magic Flute neither too philosophical nor too comical, but sought instead to unite all the conflicting elements in this work: the fairy-tale magic, fun, brightness, intellectual depth and humanistic ideals. He also did not want to bore his audience with continuous scene changes behind a closed curtain. In order to realize Everding’s concept of an uninterrupted change of scenes, stage designer Jürgen Rose resorted to painted backdrops and architectural elements. Everding calls the result a mixture of timeless fairy tale and 18th century. For this production, Everding and Wolfgang Sawallisch revised and greatly shortened Schikaneder’s dialogues. The trio sung by Sarastro, Tamino and Pamina, for example, was moved forward a few numbers for dramaturgical reasons. According to Sawallisch, “in its original position, this trio is illogical and a ‘brake’.”