Magic operas were highly popular with Viennese audiences of all classes in the second half of the 18th century; a circumstance that the enterprising new director of the Theater auf der Wieden, Emanuel Schikaneder, cleverly exploited. For his productions, Schikaneder adapted Wieland's popular fairy tales from his collection Dschinnistan for his audience. Today, we would call the result "great popcorn cinema": elaborate stage effects with many transformations as well as a plot that is not too shy to cater to the tastes of the lower classes - and which, like today's blockbuster cinema, sometimes dispenses with logic and stringency. Nevertheless, he was able to enlist the help of his two lodge brothers Paul Wranitzky and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, among others. The best-known product, or "Machwerk" as some contemporaries contemptuously called the plays in Schikaneder's theater, is undoubtedly Mozart's Magic Flute, but the fund of Viennese magic operas worth discovering is almost inexhaustible. Following his highly acclaimed first recording for ALPHA CLASSICS, Saga, German baritone Konstantin Krimmel tells us more stories here, with a program focused on Viennese magic opera. Accompanied by the Hofkapelle Orchestra of Munich, conducted by Rüdiger Lotter, Krimmel explores magic operas by Mozart, Salieri and Gluck, as well as lesser-known works by Paul Wranitzky (whose 1789 Oberon already anticipates much of Mozart's Magic Flute) and Peter von Winter, whose opera Das Labyrinth is quite officially the second part of The Magic Flute. So let us be enchanted and enthralled by arias from spectacular "blockbuster operas" from the Viennese repertoire of the 18th century with their irresistible fairy-tale world!