The distinction is one more easily observed by Germans and critical historians than by the ordinary frequenters of our opera-houses.  “Die Zauberflote” has a special charm for people of German blood, which is both admirable and amiable.  Its magnificent choruses are sung by men, and Germany is the home of the Mannergesang; among the opera’s songs are echoes of the Volkslied—­ditties which seem to have been caught up in the German nurseries or plucked off the lips of the itinerant German balladist; its emotional music is heartfelt, warm, ingenuous, and in form and spirit free from the artificiality of Italian opera as it was in Mozart’s day and as it continued to be for a long time thereafter.  It was this last virtue which gave the opera its largest importance in the eyes of Otto Jahn, Mozart’s biographer.  In it, he said, for the first time all the resources of cultivated art were brought to bear with the freedom of genius upon a genuine German opera.  In his Italian operas, Mozart had adopted the traditions of a long period of development, and by virtue of his original genius had brought them to a climax and a conclusion; but in “Die Zauberflote” he “stepped across the threshold of the future and unlocked the sanctuary of national art for his countrymen.”

In this view every critical historian can concur, no matter what his tastes or where his home.  But it is less easy for an English, French, or Italian critic than a German to pardon the incongruities, incoherences, and silly buffooneries which mar the opera.  Some of the disturbing elements are dear to the Teutonic heart.  Papageno, for instance, is but a slightly metamorphosed Kasperl, a Jack Pudding (Hanswurst) twice removed; and Kasperl is as intimately bound up in the German nature as his cousin Punch in the English.  Kasperl is, indeed, directly responsible for “Die Zauberflote.”  At the end of the eighteenth century there was in Vienna a singular individual named Emmanuel Schikaneder, a Jack-of-all-trades so far as public amusements were concerned—­musician, singer, actor, playwright, and manager.  There can be no doubt but that he was a sad scalawag and ribald rogue, with as few moral scruples as ever burdened a purveyor of popular amusements.  But he had some personal traits which endeared him to Mozart, and a degree of intellectuality which won him a fairly respectable place among the writers for the stage at the turn of the century.  Moreover, when he had become prosperous enough to build a new theatre with the proceeds of “Die Zauberflote,” he was wise enough to give a generous commission, unhampered by his customary meddlesome restrictions, to Beethoven; and discreet enough to approve of the highly virtuous book of “Fidelio.”  At the beginning of the last decade of the eighteenth century, however, his theatre had fallen on evil days, and in dire straits he went to Mozart, whose friendship he had enjoyed from the latter’s Salzburg days, and begged him to undertake the composition of an