The Magic Flute in the context of "Orfeo ed Euridice"

Scenic design, also known as stage design or set design, is the creation of scenery for theatrical productions including plays and musicals. The term can also be applied to film and television productions, where it may be referred to as production design. Scenic designers create sets and scenery to support the overall artistic goals of the production. Scenic design is an aspect of scenography, which includes theatrical set design as well as light and sound.

Modern scenic designers are increasingly taking on the role of co-creators in the artistic process, shaping not only the physical space of a production but also influencing its blocking, pacing, and tone. As Richard Foreman famously stated, scenic design is a way to "create the world through which you perceive things happening." These designers work closely with the director, playwright, and other creative members of the team to develop a visual concept that complements the narrative and emotional tone of the production. Notable scenic designers who have embraced this collaborative role include Robin Wagner, Eugene Lee, and Jim Clayburgh

The keyboard glockenspiel (French: jeu de timbre) or organ glockenspiel is an instrument consisting of a glockenspiel operated by a piano keyboard. It was first used by George Frideric Handel in the oratorio Saul (1739). It was also used in the 1739 revivals of his Il Trionfo del Tempo and Acis and Galatea, and the next year in L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Half a century later, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart employed a strumento d'acciaio in The Magic Flute (1791) to represent Papageno's magic bells. It is now considered proven that Mozart meant a keyboard glockenspiel.

From the 19th century onwards, the keyboard glockenspiel fell into the background due to the introduction of the celesta in 1886, which, due to its larger range and more modern construction, could also play more difficult glockenspiel parts.[9] In contrast to the very soft sound of the celesta (produced by the felt hammers of the playing mechanism), the historical keyboard glockenspiel had a very clear, metallic sound. Its sound plates were struck with steel or hard plastic clappers. It had no sound-enhancing soundboard and usually had a range of 2 to 2.5 octaves. There are also a smaller number of historical instruments with a range of 3 1/3 octaves (C5–E8).

A roulade (from Old French roler, "to roll") is a type of music ornamentation. The term has been used with some variation in meaning. While the term has had some usage in instrumental music, it is most frequently used in the context of vocal music to refer to a florid embellishment of several musical notes sung on a single syllable. The word has sometimes been used interchangeably with the term coloratura to refer to any difficult vocal run requiring great vocal dexterity, or as a synonym for or a specific type of virtuosic melisma. The term roulade has also been used more specifically to refer to the ornamental practice of splitting up the melodic line of a piece of music into many smaller notes.

The term roulade has sometimes been defined as a vocal ornamental passage specifically limited to opera arias of the Classical and Romantic music periods. However, this limited definition is contradicted in the historical record, and other writers have used the term in contexts to other forms of music, such as oratorio, gospel music, and rock and roll.

Oberon, or The Elf King (German: Oberon oder König der Elfen), or simply Oberon, originally known as Huon and Amanda (German: Hüon und Amande), is a romantic Singspiel in five acts by Friederike Sophie Seyler, inspired by the poem Oberon by Christoph Martin Wieland, which itself was based on the epic romance Huon of Bordeaux, a French medieval tale. It has been named for two of its central characters, the knight Huon and the fairy king Oberon, respectively. Musicologist Thomas Bauman describes the work as "an important impulse for the creation of a generation of popular spectacles trading in magic and the exotic. Die Zauberflöte [The Magic Flute] in particular shares many features with Oberon, musical as well as textual."

The opera was published in "Flensburg, Schleswig and Leipzig" in 1789, the year Seyler died. Seyler was married to the prominent theatre director Abel Seyler, the founder of the Seyler Theatre Company and a noted promoter of both German opera and William Shakespeare. The opera was dedicated to their common long-time friend and collaborator, the actor Friedrich Ludwig Schröder. Seyler's opera and a plagiarized version by Karl Ludwig Giesecke both enjoyed popularity from the late 18th century. The opera had a central role in the development of Emanuel Schikaneder's theatre and its focus on fairy tale operas which culminated in The Magic Flute, and was one of the influences that the latter's libretto built upon.

Masonic music has been defined as "music used in connection with the ritual and social functions of freemasonry." Two major types of music used in masonic lodges are lodge songs, played to keyboard accompaniment before or after meetings, or during meals; and music written to accompany specific masonic ceremonies and events. Because the number 3 and the letter 'B' are of particular significance to freemasonry, music written in the keys of C minor or E flat major, which both involve 3 flats, (whose symbol '♭' resembles the lowercase letter 'b'), in their key signatures has been considered especially appropriate for masonic ceremonial music.

Although there had been earlier examples, like Jean-Philippe Rameau's opera Zoroastre (1749), whose librettist Louis de Cahusac was a Freemason, the masonic music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is among the best-known of its kind. Mozart's opera The Magic Flute and his incidental music to Thamos, King of Egypt have masonic connections. Other openly masonic compisitions by Mozart include the Maurerische Trauermusik (Masonic Funeral Music) and a number of songs and cantatas.

The Theater auf der Wieden, also called the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden or the Wiednertheater, was a theater located in the then-suburban Wieden district of Vienna in the late 18th century. It existed for only 14 years (1787–1801), but during this time it was the venue for the premiere of no fewer than 350 theatrical works, of which the most celebrated was Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. During most of this period the director of the theater was Emanuel Schikaneder, remembered today as librettist and impresario of The Magic Flute.