The resurrection of a successful opera
after 210 years in a coma.
Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto for the most successful opera of all time, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, built on the success of The Magic Flute and, with his team of composers, wrote several sequels to The Magic Flute.
The opera “The Philosopher’s Stone” paved the way for The Magic Flute’s success. Afterward, even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe attempted to write a sequel to The Magic Flute, but abandoned his attempt when he learned that Schikaneder had already premiered his sequel, “The Magic Flute’s Second Part,” the Labyrinth, on June 12, 1798, at the Vienna Theater.
Its sequel, “Babilon’s Pyramids,” was also a huge success and a box office hit for its time, with 64 performances alone from its premiere on October 23, 1797, to 1801. This was an enormous success for the time, as operas were often performed only two or three times and then disappeared into obscurity.
Babilon’s Pyramids was performed again in 1815 at the Estates Theatre in Prague, but no further performances have been documented since then, so the opera appears to have been without a performance for 210 years.
What is left of it? Only on December 4, 2024, was the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg published a digitized version of the surviving manuscript of Act 1, composed by Johann Mederitsch (Gallus). For some pieces, there is no score available.
On May 10, 2025, :e l l e n b e r g e r :wolfgang discovered the manuscript of Act 2 in the LOC – Library of Congress in Washington. Using the digital copy, he was able to publish the score with the existing pieces and orchestrate the missing pieces, thus completing the opera’s resurrection!
However, this is only one-sixth of the entire project by :e l l e n b e r g e r, who, with the Magic 6 cycle, promotes a “Schikaneder Ring with guests.” He also published the opera Sarastro, which was never fully staged and which was completed into a complete story by Liszt student Karl Eduard Goepfart and librettist Gottfried Stommel. The cycle also includes a contemporary Magic Flute II and Labyrinth II by composer Franck Adrian Holzkamp and librettist Gerd Scherm, both Freemasons themselves.
Thus, theaters that purchase these operas from :e l l e n b e r can boast a world premiere, a staged world premiere, and a resurrection world premiere after 210 years.
| Babilons Piramiden – Pyramids of Babylon | https://z4.doctorsdome.events |
| Magic-6-Cycle | https://magic.doctorsdome.events |
| :e l l e n b e r g e r | https://ellenberger.me |
| sounding partitions (playlists) | https://www.youtube.com/WolfgangEllenberger/playlist |
