Silber Die Hochzeit: Ein Bonuskapitel

"When the ci-hitty gets into a bu-hoys sy-hist-em, he loses his a-hankerin' for the cou-huntry." So intones W.C. Fields in his Yukon-based Victorian absurdist two-reeler The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933). However, if the city you lived in was Salzburg, Austria, the idea of "a-hankerin' for the cou-huntry" was a popular one, and Salzburg's court composer Johann Michael Haydn paid tribute to it through these two little "Abbey operettas" written not for a civic theater, but for the theater at the Benedictine University in Salzburg. Haydn's singspiel Die Hochzeit auf der Alm (The Wedding on the Alpine Pasture, 1763) was intended as a mere opener to Salzburg scribbler Florian Reichssiegel's ponderous five-act Latin tragedy Pietas conjugalis in Sigismundo et Maria; however, it was the singspiel that won the day.

Johann Michael Haydn (14 September 1737 – 10 August 1806) was an Austrian composer of the classical period, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn.Shortly after he left the choir-school, Michael was appointed Kapellmeister at Nagyvárad (Großwardein, Oradea) and later, in 1762, at Salzburg. The latter office he held for forty-three years, during which time he wrote over 360 compositions for the church and much instrumental music.
He was acquainted with Mozart, who had a high opinion of his work, and was the teacher of both Carl Maria von Weber and Anton Diabelli.