The focus of this book is the National Court Theatre of Vienna, during Mozart's time. It explores the performances, the companies who performed there and the subscribers. Opera, theatre history, culture and the political history of the Habsburg empire in 18th-century Vienna is examined.

By studying the operation of court theatre under Emperors Joseph II and Leopold II, Dorothea Link here provides a context for Mozart's career as an opera composer in Vienna. The book brings together a large number of hitherto unavailable primary sources (including the diary of Count Carl Zinzendorf, the theatre account books and records, and other contemporary records such as posters, almanacs, and newspapers) to present a cohesive view of the court theatre in Mozart's Vienna. Link provides the foundation for a study of Mozart reception history and patronage in general, and of Mozart's singers in particular.

Link has given us an invaluable gift. The data she has put at our fingertips can be used to support, contradict and complicate our stories about the place of theatre in Viennese society... It is up to future scholars in the field to make the best use of this precious information... we must be grateful to... Dorothea Link... for reminding us so vividly and so thoroughly how many different sorts of raw material go into the making of art.