The rediscovery of the score to the singspiel Der Stein der Weisen in 1996 caused a sensation. One year before the spectacular success of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Emanuel Schikaneder, director of the Freihaustheater auf der Wieden in Vienna and later the original Papageno, had already written a different fairy tale based on Christoph Martin Wieland’s collection, Dschinnistan. Most of the music for the singspiel was written by Johann Baptist Henneberg, soon to conduct the first ever performance of The Magic Flute, but parts were also composed by the original Sarastro, Franz Xaver Gerl, the original Tamino, Benedikt Schack, and last but not least by Mozart himself who contributed a duet and part of the finale. Rüdiger Lotter, conductor of the Hofkapelle Munich, has long championed this singspiel, which in many ways anticipates Mozart’s later success. In Michael Schade, who portrays Astromonte, one of the foremost Mozart singers of the present day takes the stage in the leading role.

Concert performance in German with German surtitles
Introduction to the work 30 minutes before curtain-up