Premiere of Die Entführung aus dem Serail
- When
- 1781–1782
- Where
- Burgtheater, Vienna; Vienna
- Episodes
- 2
Mozart's three-act singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (K. 384) premiered at the Vienna Burgtheater on 16 July 1782, with the composer conducting. The commission arose from the Nationalsingspiel project of Emperor Joseph II, and Mozart secured the libretto from Gottlieb Stephanie after arriving in Vienna in 1781.
Episodes
- Commission and Libretto
After arriving in Vienna in 1781, Mozart lobbied Stephanie for a commission and received the libretto on 29 July 1781.
- Premiere at the Burgtheater
Die Entführung aus dem Serail premiered on 16 July 1782 at the Vienna Burgtheater, with Mozart himself conducting the performance.
Background and detail
Background. Mozart arrived in Vienna in 1781 at age twenty-five, seeking professional opportunity, and promptly cultivated Gottlieb Stephanie to lobby for an opera commission. He impressed theater manager Count Franz Xaver Orsini-Rosenberg by playing excerpts from Idomeneo at the home of Maria Wilhelmine Thun, and received the libretto from Stephanie on 29 July 1781.
The Work. Die Entführung aus dem Serail is a singspiel in three acts, K. 384, with a German libretto by Gottlieb Stephanie based on Christoph Friedrich Bretzner's Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail. As a Singspiel its music lacks recitatives and consists entirely of set numbers, and it is lighthearted and frequently comic.
Institutional Context. The opera's first sponsor was the Nationalsingspiel, a pet project (1778–1783) of Austrian emperor Joseph II. The Burgtheater, originally the K.K. Hofburgtheater and the national theater of Austria, hosted three Mozart opera premieres: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), Le nozze di Figaro (1786), and Così fan tutte (1790).
People involved
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart · Composer and conductor of the premiere
- Gottlieb Stephanie · Librettist
- Christoph Friedrich Bretzner · Author of the source libretto Belmont und Constanze
- Joseph II · Austrian emperor whose Nationalsingspiel project first sponsored the opera
- Count Franz Xaver Orsini-Rosenberg · Manager of the Burgtheater
- Maria Wilhelmine Thun · Friend and patroness of Mozart
Sources
- Die Entführung aus dem Serail Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-02
- Burgtheater Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-30
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.