[1] He had written operas on literary plots before, beginning with his first in 1998, Tri sestry (Three Sisters) after Anton Chekhov's play.

The play had premiered five years earlier at the Akademietheater in Vienna, staged by the author,[2] and was awarded the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis of 2010.

Schimmelpfenig and Eötvös chose 21 short scenes from the play's 48[3] "disparate snapshots".

[1] The UK premiere was toured by Music Theatre Wales in 2017, during which time it was banned from the stage of the Hackney Empire for alleged "yellowface" racism.

A stewardess finds the tooth in her bowl of soup and takes it on a trip to China.