On the 7th of February 1786 in Vienna a celebration took place, organised by Kaiser Joseph II in honour of the Governor General of the Netherlands. In the programme of the celebration, besides dinner parties and dances, there was a music competition: the audience had to choose what was superior: Italian or German opera. On that occasion, two composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, were asked to create one-act works to a comic plot from life in the theatre’s backstage.

Salieri represented the Italian school at that competition and wrote the opera Prima la musica e poi le parole. Mozart wrote the Singspiel in the German style Der Schauspieldirektor. The composer and the librettist of the latter made fun of fretful and quarrelsome characters, who can often be seen in the theatre world, of self-satisfied prima donnas and a desire of every artist to be the favourite of the audience.