The Magic Flute Libretto: More Literary, Religious and Historical Sources and their InterpretationsThomson, Ian

This libretto-based study exposes the existence of an overriding purpose rooted in late-eighteenth-century eschatological thought.

It also offers a new perspective on the opera’s origins.

Dr.

Thomson examines the Alberti libretto of The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) as a literary form and reveals unexamined literary, historical and religious sources, leading to a new, more coherent interpretation of the opera and to hypotheses about the identity of the libretto’s author and Mozart’s death.