Richard Wagner went to the composition of his Gozzi opera with firefighters as a twenty-year-old. The fairies - it was ready as early as 1834, but no one wanted to have it! With the ban on love, a truly successful comic opera after Shakespeare's measure of measure, he brought it to the world premiere, on 29 March 1836 in the Magdeburger Stadttheater. But already the second performance had to be broken - because the participants had gotten on the open stage, but because of a private conflict, not because of the qualities of the new opera. The damage remained manageable, because only three visitors had come to the second performance. Smaller spirits might have given up, but Wagner knew that he had to do it just right to become a serious operatic composer.