PAPAGENO (Mozart: Die Zauberflöte). Baritone. A bird-catcher.  Tamino, chased by a snake, falls unconscious. Three Ladies kill the snake and leave to tell the Queen of Night what has happened. As Tamino awakes, Papageno appears, dressed as a bird, and claims he killed the serpent. The Three Ladies hear his lie and padlock his mouth.  He and Tamino go to rescue Pamina, Papageno having been given magic bells to protect him. Though frightened, Papageno rescues Pamina and takes her to meet Tamino. He also wards off the evil moor Monastatos and his followers by playing the bells and luring them away. He accompanies Tamino to his trials, but is unable to remain silent as ordered. Determined to find love for himself, he meets an old crone who, to his horror, declares herself to be his future bride. When he agrees to save her from incarceration by marrying her, she miraculously turns into the young and beautiful Papagena. Arias: Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja (‘I am the bird-catcher’);Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen (‘A maiden or a little wife’); duet (with Pamina): Bei männern (‘All men’). Created (1791) by Johann Emanuel Schikaneder (the opera's librettist. When the opera had its British première, this role was taken by Michael Balfe, the composer of The Bohemian Girl).

Nikola Tesla was obsessed with pigeons, ordering special seed for the birds he often fed in the park. There was one white pigeon, a female, that was very precious to him. One day the white pigeon became ill. Tesla did his best to nurse the bird back to health, but it died cradled in his hands. Tesla was not a particularly religious man, as he believed that there must be a scientific explanation for everything. But when the white pigeon died, he claimed to have witnessed a very bright light emanating from her eyes, so bright that he told his friends afterwards that not even he could have managed to create so luminous a light. It made him believe that the white pigeon must have been a messenger of a great spirit...

A machine for you to envision your dreams, the pictures and sounds in your head, exactly as if projected on a movie screen. That was the kind of machine Nikola Tesla hoped to create, or might have or possibly did. He allegedly never drew a blueprint for any of his inventions. He saw them in his mind already complete to the point he could turn them at different angles watching them work. It is said that his inventions were always perfect. Never were there miscalculations nor changes needed.