What I had not realised until the initial rehearsals was how drawing as an image of agency or invocation of it was located in the production. A connection which grew as it connected to the other large theme of the opera – the creation or at least growth of the characters through experience and time their making of themselves. – The rituals of Tamino are a diagrammatic depiction of this, but Pamina’s trials are the real heart of the opera. Her trials, – abduction, near rape, a lover who is silent, a mother who tries to turn her into an assassin are the ones we feel rather than admire. There is a parallel between the central enlightenment teaching – that we are not essentially fixed, that we make ourselves through experience, and the construction of sense in the process of drawing.