The Magic Flute isolated exceptions, modern productions strongly reflect the creative preferences of the stage director. "The Magic Flute" is presently among the most frequently performed of all operas. On 28 December 1791, three and a half weeks after Mozart's death, his widow Constanze offered to send a manuscript score of "The Magic Flute" to the electoral court in Bonn. Nikolaus Simrock published this text in the first full-score edition (Bonn, 1814), claiming that it was "in accordance with Mozart's own wishes" ("Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung", 13 September 1815). "The Magic Flute" is noted for its prominent Masonic elements, although some scholars hold that
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