ABSTRACT
The term 'Masonic opera' apply to Mozart's Die Zauberflote to indicate pervasive Masonic content in the form of a hidden coherent allegory with a complex representation of the order's symbols and initiation rituals. Moreover, some evidence suggests that the 'Masonic opera' theory is an unlikely interpretation. Cecil Hill describes Die Zauberflote as representing but one example of Masonic opera, suggests that others existed in the eighteenth century. Two of the most widely read discussions of Masonry and Die Zauberflote come to quite different conclusions about the allegory of this putative 'Masonic opera. Of course eighteenth-century comedies and court operas sometimes contained symbolic content and allegory. But the nature of these subtexts and their evidentiary basis differ fundamentally from the Masonic reading of Die Zauberflote, whose elaborates and coded representation seems highly unusual for late eighteenth century Vienna. Die Zauberflote contains some of the motifs most frequently found in fairy tales.
