About the work
Doktor und Apotheker is a comic singspiel in two acts by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, to a text by Johann Gottlieb Stephanie the Younger based on an anonymous French comedy. It premiered on 11 July 1786 at Vienna's Burgtheater and was hailed by critics as the most successful new German opera to date.
Plot
Feuding neighbours, the apothecary Stössel and the physician Krautmann, try to stop their children Leonore and Gotthold from marrying. Through disguises and a scheme, the young couple finally win their fathers' consent.
Cultural significance
With 72 performances at Vienna's court theatres by 1798 alone, the work temporarily pushed even Mozart's operas off the schedule and became the most-performed opera in Europe of its day. Blending German singspiel with the Italian buffo tradition, it is regarded as a forerunner of German comic opera and of later Viennese operetta.