Mozart's The Magic Flute

Even Salieri, the notorious villain of Peter Shaffer's drama Amadeus, admired Mozart's comic opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), which was premièred in Vienna a few weeks before Mozart's death in December 1791. Though sometimes enjoyed as a children's opera, this is not a pantomime: rooted in Freemasonry, the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, it promotes the ideals of progress, virtue, sel...