Schikaneder, Emanuel (actually, Johannes Joseph)

Schikaneder, Emanuel (actually, Johannes Joseph), prominent Austrian actor, singer, dramatist, theater director, and composer; b. Straubing, Sept. 1, 1751; d. Vienna, Sept. 21, 1812. He studied at Regensburg’s Jesuit Gymnasium, where he was a chorister at the cathedral. He became an actor with F.J. Moser’s troupe about 1773, then its director (1778); met Mozart in Salzburg in 1780. In 1783 he became lessee of Vienna’s Kärnthnertortheater until 1784; was a member of the National Theater (1785–86), then organized his own theater company. Following a sojourn as director of the Regensburg Court Theater (1787–89), he returned to Vienna to assume the directorship of the Freihaus-Theater; gave up his management duties in 1799, but remained the theater’s artistic director until it closed in 1801. He persuaded Mozart to set his play Die Zauberflöte to music; with Schikaneder as Papageno, it was first performed on Sept. 30, 1791. In 1801 he opened the Theater an der Wien, but then sold it in 1806; after a period as director of the Brunn theater, he returned to Vienna. He suffered several financial setbacks over the years and died insane. He wrote roughly 100 plays and librettos.

Bibliography

E. von Komorzynski, E. S.: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Theaters (Berlin, 1901; second ed., rev., 1951); idem, Der Vater der Zauberflöte: E. S.s Leben (Vienna, 1948; second ed., 1990).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire