The Magic Flute
The three ladies go off and Papageno enters. Papageno is a birdcatcher whose job is to catch birds for the Queen of the Night. He is a happy, simple young man. Tamino wakes up, sees him and asks him who he is. Papageno introduces himself. He has not noticed the dead monster. Tamino sees that the monster is dead and asks him who killed it. Papageno suddenly notices it and then decides to pretend that he killed it himself. The three ladies hear what he says and they come and punish him by giving him a stone instead of bread and wine, and by padlocking his mouth so that he cannot speak. Then they give Tamino a portrait of Princess Pamina. She is the daughter of the Queen of the Night. They tell him that Pamina has been captured by an evil man called Sarastro. In fact, Sarastro is a good man, and he is looking after Pamina because her mother, the Queen of the Night, is evil. The prince does not know this. He is already in love with the princess just from looking at her picture, and decides to go and rescue her.