An Introduction to Joachim Perinet’s “Mozart and Schikaneder: A Theatrical Dialogue”

In the first decade of Die Zauberflöte’s life on the stage, the Singspiel and its individual numbers were relentlessly adapted and parodied—no surprise, given the robust traditions of parody and piracy in Vienna’s theaters in the late eighteenth century.¹ Several of these works are mentioned elsewhere in this issue; the following text belongs to a further sub-genre of creative reception, in which a short theatrical scene imagines the reaction of Mozart’s ghost to the fortunes of Die Zauberflöte subsequent to his death. These playlets were intended not so much for performance as for print consumption, and they acted as a means of weighing in on the controversies that swirled around the Singspiel from its premiere.

At least four playlets belong to this category. The one translated here—Mozart und Schikaneder: ein theatralisches Gespräch über die Aufführung der Zauberflöte im Stadt-theater—is the first, and appeared on the occasion of a rival production of Die Zauberflöte at the Kärntnertortheater under Baron Peter Friedrich von Braun, which premiered on February 24, 1801.² The second in the series imagines Mozart’s critique of that same performance, and also appeared in 1801.³ The third and fourth were published in 1802, on the occasions of (respectively) Die Zauberflöte’s premiere at Schikaneder’s new Theater an der Wien, and Schikaneder’s sale of that same theater to his business partner.

Although published anonymously, Mozart und Schikaneder was written by the playwright Joachim Perinet, and if his own report is to be believed, the little pamphlet was so popular that it went through three large print runs in three days.⁴ Perinet had been one of the playwrights at the rival to the Theater auf der Wieden: Karl Marinelli’s Theater in der Leopoldstadt. Perinet even wrote a rival Singspiel to Die Zauberflöte: Kaspar der Fagottist, oder Die Zauberzither (Kaspar the Bassoonist, or the Magic Zither).⁵ In 1797, however, Perinet joined Schikaneder’s company, where he would remain until 1803, moving with Schikaneder to the Theater an der Wien. During their time together, Perinet was a staunch defender of Schikaneder, and he probably wrote Mozart und Schikaneder in consultation with the impresario, or at least with his blessing.⁶

The playlet addressed a number of scandals associated with Die Zauberflöte. The first had to do with the rival production at the Kärntnertortheater, a deliberate provocation on the part of Braun, who strongly objected to Schikaneder’s having been granted the right to build his Theater an der Wien within the Innere Stadt. Braun attempted to siphon off audiences from Schikaneder, adding insult to injury by omitting Schikaneder’s name from the playbill. Perinet’s playlet managed, then, to do double duty: while discrediting Braun’s production, it also snuck in an advertisement for the Theater an der Wien, which would open its doors on June 13, 1801. In the end, Schikaneder’s production of Die Zauberflöte there (which premiered on January 4, 1802) surpassed those of his rivals of his opponents; as the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported, “His performance of Die Zauberflöte is not just revenge for the performance at the Stadttheater, but a complete triumph over it.”⁷

The second controversy addressed in Mozart und Schikaneder centered on an altered version of Die Zauberflöte’s libretto which Christian August Vulpius had created for a 1794 production at the Weimar court theater under Goethe. Vulpius published his adapted libretto with a provocative preface that dismissed Schikaneder’s original as “nonsense” with “no plan,” impossible to bring before “our delicate public” (i.e., the elite Weimar audience) in its unvarnished state.⁸ Schikaneder was of course affronted, countering in the preface to his libretto for Der Spiegel von Arkadien:

Herr Vulpius [. . .] had the goodness to shred it [Die Zauberflöte] into three acts. But I have already forgiven the well-meaning copyist—because he is no more than that—because as his work shows, he has not one idea of music. —

For otherwise, how could...