a recording of the opera) while the camera pans to a child playing one of Monostatos' slaves reading a Donald Duck comic book. Birgit Nordin has her makeup adjusted, preparing for her later appearance under grotesquely colored lighting as she sings her second act aria "Der Hölle Rache". Finally, as the curtain is about to rise for act 2, another of Monostatos' child slaves peers through a low peephole in the curtain and he is joined by Sarastro who peeps through a higher one. A conceit of these backstage glimpses is that the singers themselves are made to resemble the characters they are playing. For example, prior to Papageno's first entry, there is a cut to Håkan Hagegård (Papageno's actor) backstage in his dressing room. Suddenly, to be ready for his cue, he jumps up out of his bed and rushes to the wings where he plays the appropriate notes on his pipe, is then helped into his birdcage by a stagehand (dressed as one of the bats Tamino encounters later on in act 1), and thus succeeds in making his entrance in the nick of time. Thus Hagegård is seen as just as unreliable, and imperturbable, as Papageno. During intermission, the Queen of the Night (Birgit Nordin) and the Three Ladies, having already been revealed as wicked, are seen smoking cigarettes in front of a "Smoking Forbidden" sign. Pamina and Tamino (Irma Urrila and Josef Köstlinger) are seen during intermission quietly playing chess in the dressing room, perhaps reflecting the chastity of their relationship as characters in the opera. Ulrik Cold studies his part for Parsifal with no less gravity than he brings to the role of Sarastro. Although the film emphasizes the context of the old theater, it also includes many effects that are purely cinematic. Thus, there are many close-ups of the singers. As Tamino looks at the locket containing Pamina's picture, she comes alive inside the locket, with the ominous face of Monostatos glimpsed over her shoulder. The scene in which Three Boys prevent Pamina's near-suicide takes place in the snow, and clearly not on the theater stage. Reception The film was a great success. In its televised premiere on New Year's Day 1975, it reached a third of the population of Sweden, and in theatrical release it created "pandemonium at box offices around the world" (Pauline Kael) and delighted many critics. In her review in