Opera in German outskirts of the city. In 1791, he persuaded Mozart to set one of his libretti, "The Magic Flute". This proved to be no ordinary "Singspiel". Though the traditional farcical elements remained, Mozart added a new seriousness, particularly in the music for Sarastro and his priests. Even more than "Die Entführung", the "Magic Flute" pointed the way forward for future German opera. The greatest German composer of the next generation, Beethoven, seized on "The Magic Flute"'s blend of domestic comedy and high seriousness for his only opera, "Fidelio", the story of a devoted wife who saves her husband from political imprisonment.
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