The Music Master by Cimarosa, Tod der Dido by Holzbauer, Dg. 21 Ag. 2022, De (2022/2022), Dirigit per Bernd Roger Bienert,, Director musical Christoph U Meyer, Schönbrunn, Vienna, Austria

"Il maestro di cappella" is a comic music-theatrical scene for a solo singer (bass-baritone) and for orchestra. After the short, musical introduction, the exalted singer appears on the stage. First he explains that he wants to present an aria to the audience "in the old style" in the style of a Scarlatti. But that doesn't happen in the course of his performance. Because, instead of beginning with the announced aria, the soloist corrects individual instruments in the orchestra pit from the stage. He doesn't skimp on his suggestions for interpretation, which become more and more independent and gets tangled up in discussions with individual orchestral instruments. By singing a few passages he tries to clarify how the individual parts are to be played. He finally leaves the stage satisfied. "Death of Dido" is a one-act opera drama by Ignaz Holzbauer, which the Austrian composer and Mozart contemporary composed in 1779 in Italian to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio on behalf of Elector Carl Theodor. It was Holzbauer's penultimate opera that he premiered at the Mannheim National Theater and it was also the first opera that was newly composed for this theatre. Up to this point in time, Singspiele, mostly translated from French, had been performed at the National Theater there. Under the title "Death of Dido", loosely based on Metastasio's libretto Didone abbandonata, Holzbauer worked out a German version, which was also performed in Mannheim in 1784 shortly after Holzbauer's death.