Searching on the Internet, led him to a treasure of information on Mozart’s great work on symbolism of Zoroastrianism and its relation to Free-masonry. It may be of interest to your readers that conspicuous in there was an essay entitled Mozart’ s Die Zaubeiflote and Zoroaster. The essay is authored by my good friend Dr Gernot Windfuhr, Professor of Iranian studies at the University of Michigan. More pertinent is the fact that this was a paper he read and was published in the proceedings of the Second International Congress, held at the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute from January 5-8, 1995.
Windfuhr says:
While the wisdom of the opera is that of ancient Egypt the high priest is Sarastro, whose name is modeled after Iranian Zoroaster … This point has attracted little attention … although, the setting of the opera is likewise ancient Egypt, the setting of the fairy tale is Persia … This point appears not to have been noticed at all.
In the essay he notes that Mozart is known to have been aware of Zoroaster during the composition of the opera, but we do not know of the sources he relied on. Windfuhr discusses several contemporary works on Zoroastrianism in an attempt to focus on the most probable one that Mozart would have had access to. He then describes the setting of the opera and goes into adetailed discussion of the character of Sarastro and along the way, Windfuhr with his broad scholarship of Zoroastrianism, corroborates the acts of the opera with the relevant parts of the Gathic hymns of the prophet.
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