Seraglio palace, the other (in the sense of enclosure for wild animals) from Late Latin: "", derived from "serare", to close, which comes from "sera", a door-bar. In the context of the "turquerie" fashion, the seraglio became the subject of works of art, the most famous perhaps being Mozart's Singspiel, "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"). In Montesquieu's "Persian Letters", one of the main characters, a Persian from the city of Isfahan, is described as an occupant of a seraglio. "The Seraglio" may refer specifically to the Topkapı Palace, the residence of the former Ottoman Sultans in
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