In May 1791, Mozart's friend Emanuel Schikaneder commissioned "The Magic Flute." In keeping with the popular level of his theater, Schikaneder himself supplied Mozart with the libretto about the rescue of a good fairy's daughter from a wicked magician by a hero armed witha magic flute. After a good deal of the music was written, composer and librettist, both Freemasons, grafting Masonic ideals onto the plot, transformed a simple fairy tale into a moralistic allegory, and a "Singspiel" into one of the world's greatest operas.