Gottlieb Stephanie

Johann Gottlieb Stephanie the Younger (19 February 1741 – 23 January 1800) was an Austrian playwright, director and librettist, most famously to Mozart.

Stephanie was born in Breslau, Prussia. He was taken prisoner by the Austrian forces in the Battle of Landeshut (1760) in the Seven Years' War. After nine months of imprisonment in Villach, he joined the Imperial Army and went to Vienna after the war ended.^[1] He was appointed to head the National Singspiel, a favourite project of Emperor Joseph II.

Stephanie's adaptation of Christoph Friedrich Bretzner's Belmont und Constanze has been harshly criticized; E. J. Dent called it "the very worst that he ever set to music". Mozart wrote to his father, "you are quite right so far as Stephanie's work is concerned. ... I am well aware that the verse is not of the best."^[2]

In 1769 Stephanie adapted Shakespeare's Macbeth to suit popular taste in Vienna. It was performed in the 1770s.^[3]

^ Constantin von Wurzbach: "Stephanie, Gottlieb." In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (Biographical Lexicon of the Empire of Austria). Part 38 Kaiserlich-königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1879, p. 222–225 (digitalised).
^ Boerner, Steve (1998). "K. 384, Die Entführung aus dem Serail". The Mozart Project. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.
^ Williams, Simon. Shakespeare on the German Stage, Vol. 1 1586–1914. Cambridge, 1990.

[1] Constantin von Wurzbach: "Stephanie, Gottlieb." In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (Biographical Lexicon of the Empire of Austria). Part 38 Kaiserlich-königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1879, p. 222–225 (digitalised).

[2] Boerner, Steve (1998). "K. 384, Die Entführung aus dem Serail". The Mozart Project. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.

[3] Williams, Simon. Shakespeare on the German Stage, Vol. 1 1586–1914. Cambridge, 1990.

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