This is the first opera by the most astonishing child prodigy composers of the twentieth century, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who went on to have a successful career including a dozen years during which he wrote some of the most memorable of Hollywood film scores. This one-act work by a seventeen-year-old composer was premiered to an astonished audience at the Munich Court Theater in 1916 as part of a double bill including also Korngold's next opera, Violanta. It is a comic opera full of irrepressible high spirits. It has frequent references to Viennese waltz, intended to produce atmosphere.

The text is from a play by Heinrich Teweles that uses Schiller's ballad as the fulcum of its plot. It was the happy inspiration of the librettist, Leo Feld, to place the story in the 1700s, when Schiller's ballad was new. A young musician, Wilhlem, and his new wife, Laura, celebrate his appointment to an important post when a long-lost friend, Peter arrives to their great happiness. Peter (secretly jealous over his friend's happiness) convinces Wilhelm, using the Schiller play as an example, that the composer must sacrifice something precious in the fact of all this good fortune, so as not to tempt fate. Peter suggests that Wilhelm provoke a fight with Laura by asking her a question he has agreed not to raise: Her former life. Although angered by the question, Laura does not take the bait; the newlyweds do not fight, but instead decide that the item to sacrifice is their supposed friendship with Peter, who had tried to steal their happiness.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide