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 Smurfs and the Magic Flute the original "Thomas Crown Affair". It was released a year later in its native Belgium, and in some European territories subsequently. A book adaptation of the film, by Anthea Bell, was published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton in 1979 (). It was not until the success of Hanna-Barbera's "The Smurfs" cartoon that "Flute" began to gain widespread attention: in the early 1980s, Stuart R. Ross, head of First Performance Pictures Corporation, acquired the American rights to the film for US$1,000,000. In doing so, he sold those rights to Tribune Entertainment (television), Vestron Video (home video), and Atlantic Releasing