The hero, Tamino, sets out to rescue Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night, with whom he is in love and who has been abducted by Sarastro. Sarastro presides over a society into which Tamino is invited: he must undergo a number of trials, at the end of which he will be granted Pamina’s hand. Throughout this adventure, Tamino is accompanied by the bird-catcher Papageno, who also meets his own future partner, Papagena. Isn’t Sarastro, however, in the promises he makes to the young people, manipulative? Is he not, moreover, the beneficiary of a cult and of slaves, in contradiction with his egalitarian principles? Should we not, accordingly, believe in the sincerity of the Queen of the Night and of the outburst in which she expresses her wounded maternal feelings?