The Magic Flute Trivia
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60 free The Magic Flute trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Magic Flute was Mozart's last opera, written for a suburban Viennese theatre run by a friend who played the birdcatcher himself, and it opened just two months before the composer died. This quiz covers the whole thing: the plot from the serpent in the first scene to the Temple of the Sun, the characters (Tamino, Pamina, Papageno, Papagena, Sarastro, Monostatos, the Queen of the Night and her three ladies), the arias everyone knows and the ones only opera fans do, and the strange lost instrument Mozart wanted for Papageno's bells. It also covers the history around the work: Emanuel Schikaneder and the Theater auf der Wieden, the singers at the 1791 premiere, Mozart's sister-in-law who first sang the Queen, the Masonic symbolism and the number three, the deathbed story about the top F, and the later life of the piece on record and film with Toscanini, Beecham, Ingmar Bergman and Kenneth Branagh. Easy questions ask who wrote it; the expert tier asks for keys, voice ranges and premiere casts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on The Magic Flute, the Queen of the Night aria, Schikaneder and the two films, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Mozart and on opera.
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Q 01Tamino, the hero sent to rescue Pamina, is what by birth?
A prince
A prince, the handsome kind fairy tales require, yet his rescue story turns into a string of ordeals he must pass on the way to enlightenment.
Q 02What reward does the Queen of the Night promise Tamino if his rescue mission succeeds?
The captive as his bride
The captive as his bride. It is an easy promise for the Queen to make, since her real aim, which comes out in Act 2, is to see Sarastro dead.
Q 03Why can Tamino not contradict Papageno's boast of having killed the monster?
He had fainted
He had fainted. The hero collapses in the first minutes of the opera and wakes beside the dead beast, so the first passer-by is free to claim the kill.
Q 04The Magic Flute is a Singspiel. What does that form combine?
Singing and spoken dialogue
It was a popular German form, unlike Mozart's Italian operas with sung recitative.
Q 05What kind of theatre staged The Magic Flute's 1791 premiere?
Suburban
Suburban. An old friend of Mozart ran a company there that played operas in German, and Mozart composed this one for that troupe.
Q 06In which city did The Magic Flute have its premiere?
Vienna
Vienna. Mozart left an archbishop's service there after a stormy meeting in June 1781 and stayed on to earn his own living.
Q 07What relation is the Queen of the Night to Pamina?
Her mother
Her mother. The Queen tells Tamino her daughter has been carried off and sends him off to bring her back.
Q 08The Queen's Three Ladies paint Sarastro as an evil demon; what does he turn out to be?
A benevolent priest
A benevolent priest: an old man at the temple door tells Tamino the truth, and the rescuer ends up siding with the man he was sent to fight.
Q 09What is Papageno's occupation?
Bird-catcher
Bird-catcher. He traps birds for the Queen of the Night, and her ladies pay him for each day's catch in wine, sweet bread and figs.
Q 10In what disguise does Papagena first appear to Papageno?
As an old woman
As an old woman who insists she is 18 years and 2 minutes old; only when Papageno grudgingly promises to marry her does she turn into a pretty young girl.
Q 11What creature is chasing Tamino when the opera opens?
A serpent
A serpent. The Queen's three attendants kill it, and Papageno, wandering in afterwards, claims to have strangled it with his bare hands.
Q 12How do the Three Ladies punish Papageno for lying about killing the monster?
They padlock his mouth
They padlock his mouth, so the chatterbox can only hum his way through the next number until the ladies relent and take the lock off.
Q 13What do the ladies give Papageno for protection alongside Tamino's flute?
Magic bells
Magic bells. When he is recaptured later and plays them, his captors drop everything and dance helplessly away.
Q 21What is the Queen of the Night's Act 2 rage aria called?
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen, 'Hell's vengeance boils in my heart': the Queen sings it while ordering Pamina to commit murder, in a part famed as perhaps the hardest ever composed.
Q 22Whose 1940s recording of the Queen of the Night's aria became famous for being so badly sung?
Florence Foster Jenkins
Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York socialite in her seventies, paid for the record herself and went on to sell out Carnegie Hall; Meryl Streep played her in 2016.
Q 23A recording of the Queen of the Night's rage aria left Earth in 1977 aboard which spacecraft?
Q 14Tamino falls in love with Pamina after seeing what?
Her portrait
Her portrait. The Queen's ladies hand it over, and within minutes he has sworn to rescue a woman he has never met.
Q 15Who is Monostatos?
Chief of Sarastro's slaves
Chief of Sarastro's slaves, and Pamina's jailer; when he and Papageno first come face to face, each takes the other for the devil and both bolt.
Q 16What do Tamino and Pamina do the moment they first meet face to face?
Fall into each other's arms
Fall into each other's arms, to the indignation of Sarastro's watching followers; until that moment the two lovers have never exchanged a word.
Q 17Tamino is turned away from the temples of Reason and Nature; the third temple is dedicated to what?
Wisdom
Wisdom. Voices order Tamino back from the other two doors, but here an old priest comes out to talk, and what he says shakes Tamino's trust in the Queen.
Q 18Which two Egyptian gods does Sarastro invoke at the start of Act 2?
Isis and Osiris
Isis and Osiris. Sarastro has just told his council that Tamino will face the ordeals, and he prays that the divine couple will protect him and Pamina.
Q 19What vow must Tamino keep during his first trial, causing Pamina to think he no longer loves her?
Silence
Silence. Pamina takes his refusal to speak as rejection, and her despair carries her to the brink of suicide before the three boys step in.
Q 20What does the Queen of the Night hand Pamina in Act 2, ordering her to kill Sarastro?
A dagger
A dagger. She swears to cast Pamina off for ever unless Sarastro dies by the girl's hand, a threat she delivers in the opera's most famous aria.
The Voyager probes
The Voyager probes each carry a golden record, a message for any alien life that might one day find them, and Edda Moser's Queen of the Night is on it.
Q 24Which voice type sings the Queen of the Night?
Coloratura soprano
Coloratura soprano, the agile high voice built for rapid runs and leaps; Mozart wrote the part for Josepha Hofer, a singer known for her command of very high notes.
Q 25Josepha Hofer, the first Queen of the Night, was related to Mozart how?
She was his sister-in-law
She was his sister-in-law: Mozart first fell in love with her sister Aloysia Weber, got a cool reception, and later married a third sister, Constanze.
Q 26Sarastro's Act 2 aria declaring that revenge has no place in his domain is called what?
In diesen heil'gen Hallen
In diesen heil'gen Hallen, 'Within these hallowed halls': Pamina begs him to spare the Queen who wants him dead, and Sarastro answers that his order has no place for revenge.
Q 27Which two elements do Tamino and Pamina pass through in the final trial?
Fire and water
Fire and water. Pamina insists on facing the ordeal at his side, and the flute's music carries the two of them through both unharmed.
Q 28What does Papageno resolve to do when he thinks he has lost Papagena for good?
Hang himself
Hang himself. Three boys talk him out of it, which is why researchers call the protective effect of stories about people who get through a crisis the Papageno effect.
Q 29The opera's comic couple begin their reunion duet by stammering which syllable over and over?
Pa-Pa-Pa-
Pa-Pa-Pa- is each stammering the other's name in sheer astonishment, before the pair start planning a nest full of little Papagenos and Papagenas.
Q 30What fate meets the plotters who storm Sarastro's temple in the final scene?
They are cast into eternal night
They are cast into eternal night: thunder and lightning scatter the Queen's raiding party at the temple's edge, and the scene dissolves into a stage flooded with sunlight.