About the work
Des Teufels Lustschloss is a three-act "natural magic opera" by Franz Schubert with spoken dialogue after August von Kotzebue, who in turn drew on a French source by Joseph-Marie Loaisel de Tréogate. The sixteen-year-old Schubert composed the work in 1813/14 in two versions; it remained unperformed in his lifetime and received only a concert premiere on 12 December 1879 at Vienna's Musikvereinssaal.
Plot
A nobleman puts his niece's newly wed husband to the test by subjecting him, in a supposedly haunted castle, to a series of illusions and stage tricks designed to probe his fidelity and steadfastness. In the end the seemingly supernatural terrors turn out to be staged, and the marriage proves its constancy.
Cultural significance
As Schubert's earliest fully preserved stage work, Des Teufels Lustschloss stands above all as evidence of his precocious compositional skill; a staged premiere did not take place until 1978, at the Hans-Otto-Theater in Potsdam, more than 160 years after it was written.