The Magic Flute outside Vienna (21 September 1792) in Lemberg, then in Prague. It then made "triumphal progress through Germany's opera houses great and small", and with the early 19th century spread to essentially all the countries of Europe—and eventually, everywhere in the world—where opera is cultivated. As Branscombe documents, the earlier performances were often of highly altered, sometimes even mutilated, versions of the opera (see "Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith"). Productions of the past century have tended to be more faithful to Mozart's music, though faithful rendering of Mozart and Schikaneder's original (quite explicit) stage directions and dramatic vision continues to be rare; with
Libretto of The Magic Flute to draw a generalized observation from the proceedings on stage in order to promote virtue or condemn vice." Cairns attributes a taste for "didactic sentiment" specifically to the Viennese popular theater. Concerning "The Magic Flute" specifically, Rosen writes that it "develops ... a conception of music as a vehicle for simple moral truths." The opera's didacticism is concentrated in passages of poetry, set in the ensemble scenes, in which the characters cease to converse with each other and join in singing an edifying lesson to the audience. One example is found in the first act, just after Monostatos and his