About the work
Kleider machen Leute is a musical comedy in a prologue and three acts by Alexander von Zemlinsky, with a libretto by Leo Feld after Gottfried Keller's novella of the same name from the cycle The People of Seldwyla. Zemlinsky composed the work between 1907 and 1909, tailored to the Vienna Volksoper, where he worked as Kapellmeister; it premiered there on 2 December 1910. A two-act revised version followed in 1922 at the New German Theatre in Prague.
Plot
The penniless tailor's journeyman Wenzel Strapinski is mistaken for a nobleman in the small town of Goldach because of his elegant clothes and a borrowed count's carriage. He falls in love with Nettchen, the councillor's daughter, who introduces him as her fiancé, until the jealous Böhni exposes the deception in public. Nettchen nonetheless chooses to stay at Strapinski's side, even without his supposed title.
Cultural significance
As one of Zemlinsky's few comic operas, the work takes up the theme of appearance versus reality with subtle wit, showing a lighter side of his output alongside the dark one-act operas of the same years.