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European Views Of Egyptian Magic And Mystery: A Cultural Context For The Magic Flute, Kerry M. Muhlestein

Faculty Publications

Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder lived and created during the height of eighteenth-century interest in and fascination with Egypt. The Magic Flute's Egyptian setting would therefore evoke in their contemporaneous audience notions of a distant land with an exotic and magical culture. The numerous Egyptian elements of the work are representative of its era and are situated near the end of a continuum of European thought about ancient Egypt before the solid foundation of modern day Egyptology had been laid.