The Magic Flute ideals of Sarastro's community and seeks to join it. Separately, then together, Tamino and Pamina undergo severe trials of initiation, which end in triumph, with the Queen and her cohorts vanquished. The earthy Papageno, who accompanies Tamino on his quest, fails the trials completely but is rewarded anyway with the hand of his ideal female companion Papagena. The opera was the culmination of a period of increasing involvement by Mozart with Schikaneder's theatrical troupe, which since 1789 had been the resident company at the Theater auf der Wieden. Mozart was a close friend of one of the singer-composers of the
The Magic Flute (1975 film) children, who are silent. Evidon suggests that the characters of Frid and Petra in Bergman's 1955 film "Smiles of a Summer Night", and Johan and Alma in his "Hour of the Wolf" (1968) pre-figure his conception of Papageno and Papagena, and Tamino and Pamina respectively in "The Magic Flute". The latter film includes a puppet-theatre sequence of part of Act 1 of the opera. Evidon also sees a parallel between Bergman's treatment of Sarastro and Amfortas in "Parsifal". In producing the opera, Bergman sought to fulfill his early dream (see above) of a production in the Drottningholm Palace Theatre (one