Zauberflote is Mozart’s greatest work because in it he shows himself a German Master

Ludwig van Beethoven

Some things to think about.

• Mozart worked at the end of the Late Enlightenment… and his later compositions display changes that are indicative of the coming Romantic Era. He was deeply conscious of being German and expresses in The Magic Flute wider concerns about German culture. Late-stage Aufklärer sought to reconcile reason with nature, the head with the heart.
• German philosophes, unlike their French counterparts who sought outward political objectives, conceived of FREEDOM as a personal and internal objective. They sought the reform of man into a mature, rounded individuals.
• European society endures a profound shift in aesthetics in the mid-18th century.
• Mozart was deeply involved in freemasonry, a chief vehicle for the propagation of Enlightenment ideas in Austria. Masons sought to rebuilt society by inculcating virtue and reason in men and dispelling superstition .
• The Magic Flute premiered 30 Sept 1791 in Vienna at Theater auf der Wiede, a private stage known for its Singspiels, and where Mozart’s friend Emanuel Schikaneder’s company played.
• By 1791 the French Revolution had already moved through it’s first phase. France was a constitutional monarch and had just elected its first Legislative Assembly. Fearing domestic upheaval, Austria reintroduced press censorship in 1790.
• Emperor Joseph II, the ‘Musical King’ known for his educational reforms, religious toleration, and the easing of censorship, had died in Feb.1790.
• By the 1790s Vienna supported over 70 coffeehouses (1 for every 3000 persons), ranked 3rd in publishing (up from 46th in the 1730s), and possessed a German National Theater and National Opera.
• Like many people on the make in the 18th century, Mozart was an avid reader and used a wide variety of contemporary sources, Jean-Jacques Rousseau among them, as inspiration.

Men must fall away from Nature by the abuse of Reason before they can return to her by the use of Reason.

Johann Friedrich schiller