Gottlieb Stephanie

Johann Gottlieb Stephanie the Younger (19 February 1741 – 23 January 1800) was an Austrian playwright, director and librettist, most famously to Mozart.

After nine months of imprisonment in Villach, he joined the Imperial Army and went to Vienna after the war ended.

[1] He was appointed to head the National Singspiel, a favourite project of Emperor Joseph II.

Stephanie's adaptation of Christoph Friedrich Bretzner's Belmont und Constanze has been harshly criticized; E. J. Dent called it "the very worst that he ever set to music".

[4] Gottlieb Stephanie the Younger married Anna Maria Mika (1751, Stiahlau, Bohemia – 2 February 1802, Vienna), an actress who debuted on 27 April 1771 at the Burgtheater.