Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, his poetry is elegant and polished, and largely free from the trivialities of the Anacreontic lyric of the earlier generation of imitators of French literature; but he lacked imaginative depth.

[3] In 1772 Gotter wrote his first libretto for the comic opera Die Dorfgala with music by composer Anton Schweitzer.

[1] His plays, of which Merope (1774), an adaptation in blank verse of the tragedies of Maffei and Voltaire, and Medea (1775), a melodrama, are best known, were mostly based on French originals and had considerable influence in counteracting the formlessness and irregularity of the Sturm und Drang drama.

[2] Gotter also wrote the libretti to five more operas by Benda: Walder (1776), Romeo und Julie (1776), Der Holzhauer oder Die drey Wünsche (1778), Pygmalion (1779), and Das tartarische Gesetz (1787).

He also wrote the libretto to Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg's Das tartarische Gesetz (1780) which was based on William Shakespeare's The Tempest.