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) with the ominous face of Monostatos glimpsed over her shoulder. The scene in which Three Boys prevent Pamina's near-suicide takes place in the snow, and clearly not on the theater stage. The film was a great success. In its televised premiere (New Year's Day 1975), it reached a third of the population of Sweden, and in theatrical release it created "pandemonium at box offices around the world" (Pauline Kael) and delighted many critics. In her review in "The New Yorker", Kael wrote: Ingmar Bergman's film version of "The Magic Flute" is a blissful present, a model of how opera can