This filmed version of Mozart’s opera, made for Swedish television, was staged in an eighteenth-century theater with spectacular sets and a live audience. There are backstage scenes, reaction shots from the audience, and a breakthrough approach to filming opera. Nykvist’s intimate and flexible cinematography captures the performers in closeup, transforming them into dynamic screen presences. The result is an incandescent film, a deeply human rendering of Mozart’s fairy tale that resonates with Bergman’s cinematic investigations of idealized love.