Overture (Die Entführung aus dem Serail)

Joseph II's Nationalsingspiel, founded to establish German-language opera in Vienna, gave Mozart his first substantial success there. Die Entführung aus dem Serail — a Singspiel, with spoken dialogue between the numbers — reached the Burgtheater on 16 July 1782 with the composer conducting, to a text Gottlieb Stephanie adapted from Bretzner without permission. The emperor's remark about an extraordinary number of notes may be apocryphal; the popularity across German-speaking Europe was not. Mozart was paid a flat hundred ducats and nothing thereafter. Konstanze's music in particular asks a virtuosity the modest genre had never before been required to carry.