A Magic Flute of the Fin de siècle. "Many years ago I met Schreker in Vienna. It was at the time when the work was performed at the Court Opera and aroused audiences and critics. For me and many other young musicians this performance was a shattering experience. I've been to every show." Karol Szymanowski wrote this in 1928 on the occasion of Franz Schreker's 50th birthday. The opera he is talking about here is Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin, which had its double premiere in Frankfurt and Vienna in 1913. It became a theatrical scandal. Schreker has not made it easy for his performers and audiences with this symbolically encoded "mystery", as the opera in its second version should be called in its subtitle. In the typification of the figures, the mixture of naivety and symbolic exaltation, spectacle and inwardness, the play stands in the tradition of the Vienna Volkstheater; the model of the Magic Flute can be seen everywhere as a foil. In no opera by Schreker does the music occupy such a broad space in the plot as in the Spielwerk, yes, the music is actually the central "figure". Our close and successful collaboration with the Kieler Oper now enables the world premiere recording of this exciting work. Soloists, choirs and the orchestra of the Kiel Opera are conducted by Ulrich Windfuhr.