Ennobled virtues: Conlon on Mozart’s ‘Abduction from the Seraglio’

“Nothing is as ugly as vengeance. The quality of great souls is to be humanely kind, and forgive without selfishness.”

— Pasha Selim (Act III, Final Scene)

In March of 1781, the 25-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, bolting from the stifling and provincial atmosphere of his native Salzburg, arrived in Vienna. At about the same time, Austrian emperor Joseph II — the older brother of Marie Antoinette — expressed the desire that composers write a national opera and “lift the national German stage to recognition in music,” thus liberating it from the domination of Italian opera and giving native-born German singing actors an opportunity to shine. 

Mozart, eager for any commission, especially a royal one, did just that. The result was The Abduction from the Seraglio,* an early success for Mozart and for German opera. (The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under James Conlon, will perform The Abduction from the Seraglio on July 16 at 7 p.m. and July 18 at 1 p.m. at Ravinia’s Martin Theatre.)

At the same time as Mozart was writing, British troops surrendered to the Continental Army at Yorktown, virtually ending the American War for Independence. Meanwhile, closer to home, the Kaiser abolished serfdom, introduced religious toleration and secretly signed a pact with Russia’s Queen Catherine aimed at marginalizing Turkish expansion. There was much in the air that made a Turkish subject interesting to the emperor, the Austrians and Mozart.

Of the many issues addressed in this work, the rejection of vengeance and the power of forgiveness are at its center. They are exemplified in the person of Pasha Selim, a wealthy master of the titular seraglio, who had fled persecution from North Africa to Turkey.

I would suggest that the work might more appropriately be called The Clemency of Pasha Selim, much like Mozart’s later opera, La clemenza di Tito. The central themes, as in most of Mozart’s operas, are forgiveness and the supreme power of love. In any case, the planned abduction fails to materialize.

This opera is referred to as a singspiel — a German word to denote a sung drama — and is characterized by the alternation of spoken dialogues and music. These dialogues replace the traditional Italian operatic recitatives, accompanied at the keyboard. In our Ravinia 2026 version, we will replace many of the dialogues and put the story in the words of a narrator, who doubles as the pasha.

The word seraglio, which is synonymous with palace or harem, is rarely used in today’s world. But harem in its original and correct meaning — the women’s quarters of an ancient Moslem household; more broadly, for a Turkish palace — is an architectural term, and not a reference to persons who in fact live there. Our little story will play out at Pasha Selim’s seaside palace in Turkey.

Mozart dramatizes six characters in search of fulfillment. There are two loving couples and two other men aspiring to win the love of those women. There are two love triangles — one from the upper class, and the other, following the classical model, from the servant class. The two couples are in love before the curtain rises and remain so. In that regard, there is no contest nor rivalry. But in this comic drama, there are four men and two women. Thereby hangs the tale.

Belmonte, a young Spanish nobleman, is searching for his beloved Constanze, who has been sold by pirates to a North African pasha. The pasha has emigrated to Turkey and, having bought the women from pirates, has sequestered them in a harem. Constanze (whose German name means fidelity), yearns to be rescued and reunited with her Belmonte, and the freedom to live out their sublime and faithful love.

Her servant, Blondchen (Blonde, in the vernacular), is a bright and feisty British girl who challenges everyone to treat women with respect. Blonde’s lover, Pedrillo, is the Spanish servant of Belmonte, who was captured with the women and sold into servitude as a gardener in the pasha’s service. They, too, dream of finding Belmonte and winning freedom, together with Blonde and Constanze.

Osmin, the Turkish overseer of the seraglio, is a blustering but lovable low-culture stereotype who seeks his ideal woman: a slave who meets his every demand. He hopes that Blonde will be that woman. Pasha Selim is a wealthy political fugitive from Northern Africa. He, too, seeks a loving union — man and woman, equal in spiritual, intellectual and physical harmony. He is deeply drawn to Constanze.

In the 18th century, Italian opera was compartmentalized: opera buffa made the public laugh, opera seria made it feel. Mozart began to break down this distinction by elevating the level of comic opera to concern itself with serious emotions as well.

Striking out on his own, he produced timeless works of probity and beauty, explorations into the complexity of human relationships, societal stratification and humankind’s place in a metaphysical and transcendent universe. He introduced psychological gravity and emotional depth into stock characters and situations. He accomplished all of this through the power of his music, often surpassing the quality of the available librettos. He maintained the centrality of the art of singing and drama and gave them an immense variety. Equally important, he injected the orchestra and its polyphonic/symphonic compositional character into a theatrical form that was to probe the potential of marrying those worlds.

Each of Mozart’s operas looks at love and society, the tension between the classes and the battle of the sexes. In The Abduction from the Seraglio, the composer, as he always will, advocates for true committed love and stands against coerced relationships. He demonstrates the futility of jealousy and possessiveness.

The symmetry is perfect: three “nobles” — Belmonte and Constanze (Spanish, shipwrecked, Christian) and Pasha Selim (North African, exiled by Spanish invaders, Moslem) — and three servants, Pedrillo and Blondchen (Spanish and English, shipwrecked, Christian) and Osmin (Turkish, Moslem). There are also three pairs of characters, four Christian European lovers, and two Moslem men, living in Turkey. Both Christian women, betrothed to Spaniards, are wooed by Moslems, each according to their class.

Search and rescue is the skeletal structure of this opera. The element of rescue will expand on a growing genre of operas that involve one or more characters, usually the women, who are in need of liberation from an enforced servitude or prison. The Magic Flute is an example; Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, turns that around in that the heroic wife rescues her husband, a political prisoner.

Mozart reshuffles the cards and deals a new hand to his public. Through his character portrayals, he ennobles the servant class, not by changing their status, but by endowing them with a rich and complex humanity. He humanizes the nobles by removing them from their pedestals and divulging their flaws. He reveals the mechanics of a male-dominated society, laying bare the struggles between the sexes. He defends the interests of the servant class and rarely misses an opportunity to uphold the dignity of women. And to reiterate — he advocates for love, compassion and forgiveness.

He has a sharp eye for opportunities to turn prejudices, stereotypes and presuppositions on their heads. In Abduction, Mozart accomplishes this through his most astonishing creation: Pasha Selim. He is at the center of the drama, but is musically mute; his speaking part is played by an actor. He is the author’s admonition to the public to look beyond preconceived notions, to discover virtue and dignity where his contemporary Viennese public was disinclined to see it: in other cultures, languages or religions.

To appreciate the full force of Mozart’s powerful statement, it is necessary to situate his Viennese audience in its historical context. Vienna’s preeminent position in the world of European music reflects the power it held as the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. It was cosmopolitan, bustling with trade, immigration and foreign contacts. Through exploration, international commerce and travelers’ stories, the empire provided ample material for the new taste for exoticism. It excited curiosity and even (sometimes unintentionally), openness to new ideas. Some enlightenment writers picked up on the tales told by missionaries, soldiers and traders and started to read into them. Perhaps, they conjectured, the conquered were more civilized than the conquerors, and the “savages” and “pagans” more moral than those who wanted to reform them. They suggested there were ethical lessons to be learned from abroad.

None of this was lost on young Mozart when he wrote Abduction. The Ottoman Empire, which stopped at the gates of Vienna, had been an enormous threat. For the Viennese, the Turks were a menacing enemy. Although that was greatly diminished about a hundred years before Mozart was writing, the cultural stereotypes remained. In the theater, fear and loathing often were mitigated by rendering the Turks insignificant, evil or simply comic. “Turkish” music (which came to mean anything that sounded foreign or exotic) was fashionable and exploited by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. What was highly unusual if not shocking for those seeing this opera/singspiel in 1782, was the surprise ending. The hated, feared and disdained Islamic-Turkish Pasha Selim becomes the moral hero of the story.

The reviled “Moslem foreigner” is both ennobled and ennobling. He is the first in a line of Mozartian characters who “instruct” us in moral imperatives and the meaning of love. Sarastro, at the end of that line, leads The Magic Flute’s Tamino and Pamina into wisdom, through fire and water, so they may rule as a couple (and as equals!). Far more cynically, Don Alfonso “tutors” the two young couples in Così fan tutte, leading them to a less naïve and better-informed choice of life mates.

Pasha Selim, like Sarastro, is at first perceived by the public as an evil and tyrannical authority. But with the passage of time, his depth is revealed. The pasha has all of the means, and in the context of his society, the right to force Constanze to accept his love. But he wants her to truly love him, not simply to submit. She is steadfast in her refusal, explaining that her heart belongs to another. He suffers the pangs of unrequited love, yet, though tempted, he chooses not to use violence to attain his prize. When he discovers the plot to abduct Constanze, an offense punishable by death, his first reaction is outrage. The perpetrator is the Spanish nobleman, Belmonte, the son of his worst enemy, the man who forced him to leave his native country. To punish Belmonte would give him a double satisfaction: to kill his rival in love and to take revenge on his greatest enemy by executing his son — an eye for an eye, a son for his lost happiness.

He has the power to avenge himself, destroy his rival and force himself upon the object of his desires, all of it in accordance with the laws of the land. In a surprise turnabout, he pardons everybody, grants them clemency and restores their freedom. He becomes the drama’s morally uplifting force.

Pasha Selim is, in fact, the mouthpiece for Mozart, whose middle name, Amadeus, translates to an imperative sentence: “Love God.” Mozart’s own imperative? “Love — TRUE LOVE.” It was a great destiny that Mozart rebelled against his father and the Archbishop of Salzburg, moved to Vienna and bequeathed the world a monumental and unique legacy. He, and Pasha Selim, recognized — and today teach us about — the imperative of true love, the power of forgiveness and the luminous quality of magnanimity.

© James Conlon 2012, revised January 2026

Note: The word “seraglio” (pronounced se-RAHL-yo) refers to the separated living quarters reserved for wives and concubines in an Ottoman household. It’s descended from the Turkish word saray (meaning “palace”) or Persian sara’i (“house” or “inn”), perhaps with a late Latin influence from serraculum (“enclosure”). “Seraglio” can also be translated as “harem,” in the architectural sense, a word derived from the Arabic harīm, meaning “forbidden.”

Reprinted with permission from Ravinia magazine.