ABSTRACT
Among the most imaginative schemes where Egyptian Revival forms were used, stage-designs must take pride of place, especially in the Germanspeaking countries, and, perhaps of all inspirations where Egyptianising stage-sets were concerned, Mozart’s Singspiel, Die Zauberflöte (K.620), proved to be the most potent. Die Zauberflöte is based on Séthos,1 and it is clear that the authors2 of the libretto were familiar not only with Terrasson’s work but with the writings of Apuleius, Diodorus Siculus, and Lucian (c.AD 115-c.180). A detailed discussion of the work cannot be entered into here, but the present writer’s Art and Architecture of Freemasonry goes into the tangled web at some length.3 It will be sufficient to say that Die Zauberflöte owes debts to many other works, including Thamos, König in Ägypten, by Gebler, and sundry works of Rococo exotica popular at the time.
