6, it takes its material from the slow movement of the String Quartet in A minor and from the song Der Leidende - Schubert's music for Rosamunde, relieved of the necessity of advancing a plot, has the lyrical grace of his best songs. Although hurriedly written and with much of its music taken from works composed for other purposes - most famously the Entr'acte No. Schubert's last and best singspiel, Die Verschworenen, based on Lysistrata, was written in 1823, as was his last and greatest grand opera, Fierabras, to a libretto by his friend, Leopold Kupelwieser, and his most popular piece for the stage, the incidental music from Rosamunde, a four-act stage play. But Rossini-mania prevented it from being accepted by either of Vienna's houses and it was first performed in 1854 by Liszt. Less successful were his many opera and Singspiel projects. This success prompted Schubert to compose and complete his first grand opera, Alfonso und Estrella, to a libretto by his friend, Franz Schober, in 1821-1822. Franz Schuberts best-known music for the theatre is his incidental music for Rosamunde. Schubert's most successful stage work in his lifetime was a singspiel Die Zwillingsbrüder from 1819, which ran for six performances in the Karntnertortheater in 1820. The first, Der vierjährige Posten, had a libretto by Schubert's friend, Theodor Körner the second, Fernando, had a plot not dissimilar to that of Beethoven's Fidelio the third, Claudine von Villa Bella, was in three acts, only the first of which survives and a fourth, Die Freunde von Salamanka, with a libretto by Schubert's friend, Johann Mayrhofer, followed in November, 1815. The next year, Schubert wrote the music for four singspiels, three of them in the early summer. The proto-Romantic opera Des Teufels Lustschloss, which anticipates many of the harmonic innovations of Weber's Der Freischütz, was composed in 1814. Schubert's first opera was the very Mozartean Der Spiegelritter from 1811-1812. Whether Schubert would have progressed beyond this had he lived longer is an open question, but none of his works for the stage have ever held the stage. Rarely are any of the arias, duets, trios, or ensembles in Schubert's stage works dramatic: the characters can be extremely expressive in articulating their emotions, but they almost never change or grow and the action of the plot is almost never advanced by the music. While there are many beautiful melodies in Schubert's works for the stage, little of his music in this genre is dramatic.
A more significant reason might be that while Schubert was a superb composer of songs, he could not make the leap from lyrical songs to dramatic arias. Three of the most obvious causes were the censorship prohibiting the portrayal of anything of any substance appearing on the stage, the dominance of Rossini's operas in Vienna at the time, and the astoundingly poor quality of Schubert's libretto, many by his well-meaning friends. Although Austrian composer Franz Schubert wrote 18 dramatic works - including operas, singspiels, and incidental music - he never achieved success in this field.
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