In the last three years of his all-too-brief life, Mozart experienced a steady stream of disappointments. The fickle Viennese public seemed to have lost interest in his music, a major court appointment always eluded him, and he had to borrow large sums of money from his Masonic brother Michael Puchberg to support his wife and children.

Then in the middle of 1791, another fellow Mason, the singer-impresario Emanuel Schikaneder, came to the rescue with a very unusual project. He asked Mozart to create a new singspiel — the Viennese equivalent of a Broadway musical — to present at the Theater auf der Wieden, a venue that catered to the ordinary Viennese public rather than the aristocratic audiences Mozart usually composed for. Schikaneder himself wrote the fantastic fairy-tale libretto for Die Zauberflöte, or The Magic Flute as we know it in English, and Mozart clothed it in music of sublime simplicity and wit. It was premiered on September 30, 1791, under Mozart's baton, just nine weeks before his death. That winter as he lay dying, the composer had the consolation of knowing that The Magic Flute was still playing to enthusiastic, sold-out audiences — the greatest hit of his career.

Schikaneder made the flute — an instrument Mozart once told his father he despised — into a talisman that protects the hero, Prince Tamino. Early in the story, the sinister Queen of the Night presents Tamino with the flute, which she tells him will protect him from danger as he seeks to rescue her beautiful daughter, Pamina, from the powerful priest Sarastro. And at the opera's end, the magic flute does its job as Tamino plays it while passing through fire and water with his beloved. Having successfully endured this double ordeal, Tamino and Pamina are hailed as the new rulers of Sarastro's kingdom.

As well as high comedy and romance, The Magic Flute possesses a serious ethical side, and we hear both these qualities in its remarkable overture. As dedicated Masons, Mozart and Schikaneder incorporated some of the symbolism of the Masonic rites into the music and plot of their opera. For Masons, the number three possessed mystical significance. Thus at the beginning and again in the middle of the overture, we hear three noble brass chords in the key of E-flat major, a key using three flats. The rest of the overture is a merry fugue, in which a sparkling little tune romps through the instruments in this greatest of Mozart’s overtures.

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