Die Zauberflote isn't a romantic love story but a real parable: a resemblance about higher human striving to purity and self-improvement. Not love between two people is in the centre but a more individual and higher form of it that should exist between all people. In the duet Bei Mannern welche Liebe fuhlen sing the earthly Papageno and the Queens daughter Pamina together an ode to this universal love, whilst not being in love with each other themselves: Mann und Weib und Weib und Mann, reichen an die Gottheit an.
