The Zauberflöte librettist Emanuel Schikaneder

He played “first lovers” and ageing dandies, bird-people, air spirits and “shamed elementals”. Emanuel Schikaneder began his career with the Regensburger Domspatzen, staged pompous spectacles as a theatre headmaster, but in the end unfortunately no longer knew who he was.

The Odeon, Munich’s legendary concert hall and ballroom

1,500 seats, sensational acoustics – and an organ that survived the Second World War: Opened with a “bal paré” at the beginning of the 1828 carnival season, the “magnificent temple of art” saw glittering performances, including by Clara Schumann, Edvard Grieg and Richard Strauss.

Munich gets its first opera house

During carnival, the Elector and Electress went as Indians, the President of the Court Council mimed a chimney sweep and the Salvatortheater, a converted “Haberkasten”, became a ballroom. The great Farinelli, for example, shone here – as did another castrato, Agostino Steffani, who later became a bishop.

A Berlin composer “amuses” himself in Munich in 1783

He played music with the innkeeper’s son in the “Schwarzer Adler”, marvelled at Venetian gondolas in Nymphenburg and ordered “frozen treats” in the Hofgarten. In his diary, Otto Carl Erdmann von Kospoth describes his impressions of life on the Isar at the time.

Orlando di Lasso turns Munich into a cosmopolitan city of music

Married to a “Frawenzimmer” from Landshut, the Munich court conductor Orlando di Lasso wrote his fingers to the bone, including raunchy chansons that became popular hits. His income helped him to acquire an enormous property portfolio.

The torpedoed Wagner Festival Theatre on the banks of the Isar in Munich

It would have been the largest opera house in the world at the time. But Richard Wagner had made too many enemies. He was granted a partial success: Never before and never since have so many children been baptised with the names Isolde, Elsa and Siegfried in Munich.