Die Entführung aus dem Serail

The Spanish nobleman Belmonte travels to the East to free his beloved Konstanze and the lovers Blonde and Pedrillo from the clutches of Pasha Selim. But the matter is not simple: The pasha has also fallen in love with Konstanz, and the harsh overseer Osmin has his eye on the emancipated English maid, Blonde. The attempt to escape fails, but it becomes clear that there is sometimes more humanity in the exotic East than in Europe ...

The Emperor Joseph II had created the National-Singspiel in Vienna in 1776 in order to give a boost to the culture of musical theatre in German. This came just at the right time for Mozart, who moved from Salzburg to Vienna in the 1780s; he desperately wanted to free himself from his father and Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg and try his luck as a freelance artist in the Imperial capital. The librettist Gottlieb Stephanie the younger produced a libretto for him which brought together everything that was currently fashionable on the musical stages of Vienna: One serious and one humorous set of lovers, a foolish rapscallion, a humane, noble exotic character and a location that offered the opportunity for plenty of Turkish-type music. The result was a 'Singspiel', or musical drama, in which the interplay of setting and composition was more compulsive and the characters more finely and  sensitively drawn musically than ever before. So it was no wonder that after the frequently postponed premiere at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 July 1782, Mozart's fame as an opera composer was finally established, even if the Emperor's only comment was: "Too fine for our ears, and lots of notes, dear Mozart."