Harem of European women forcibly taken into Oriental harems—evident for example in the Mozart opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio") concerning the attempt of the hero Belmonte to rescue his beloved Konstanze from the "seraglio"/harem of the Pasha Selim; or in Voltaire's "Candide", in chapter 12 of which the old woman relates her experiences of being sold into harems across the Ottoman Empire. Much of Verdi's opera "Il corsaro" takes place in the harem of the Pasha Seid—where Gulnara, the Pasha's favorite, chafes at life in the harem, and longs for freedom and true love. Eventually
Libretto of The Magic Flute in the libretto. The opening eight bars of orchestral introduction to the duet "Pa pa pa", at the moment when Papagena is revealed to Papageno as his future wife, includes the stage direction that Papageno and Papagena "both engage during the ritornello in comic play." The experiences and background of the composer, who liked to have considerable input into the libretto (see "The Abduction from the Seraglio" for testimony), are also relevant. Nedbal writes, "Moral maxims appear frequently in eighteenth-century German drama and contemporary German theorists of theater often discuss them in their treatises. The main function of maxims is