Mozart was a great joker. Once he’s got a fun during a run of his Magic Flute at Vienna’s Freihaus Theatre.
In a letter to his wife Constanze, Mozart admitted sneaking backstage and sabotaging the great Emanuel Schikaneder as the latter sang ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’. When Schikaneder, as Papageno, went up on his magic bells, Mozart, playing the glockenspiel in the wings, went down. And vice versa. Then he stopped playing altogether, leaving Schikaneder silently miming. Finally, he came in when Schikaneder wasn’t playing, causing the actor to bellow ‘Shut up!’ into the wings.
