Opera in German outskirts of the city. In 1791, he persuaded Mozart to set one of his libretti, "The Magic Flute". This proved to be no ordinary "Singspiel". Though the traditional farcical elements remained, Mozart added a new seriousness, particularly in the music for Sarastro and his priests. Even more than "Die Entführung", the "Magic Flute" pointed the way forward for future German opera. The greatest German composer of the next generation, Beethoven, seized on "The Magic Flute"'s blend of domestic comedy and high seriousness for his only opera, "Fidelio", the story of a devoted wife who saves her husband from political imprisonment.
Tarquin (opera) Tarquin (opera) Tarquin is a chamber opera by Ernst Krenek to an English libretto by Emmet Lavery. Written in 1940, it is Krenek's only unpublished opera (Op. 90), though a premiere in German translation (by M.-C. Schulte-Strathaus & P. Funk rather than the composer) took place in 1950 in Cologne. Krenek, who was in Switzerland at the time of the Anschluss, escaped to exile in the USA and a teaching position at Vassar College, where Lavery (1902–86) was a newspaper editor in neighboring Poughkeepsie (he would later run for Congress and write for Hollywood). The piece was designed for college