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Among the forgotten but highly popular operas of the late eighteenth century, Der dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebürge oder Die zween Anton (The Dumb Gardener from the Mountains or The Two Antons, Vienna, 12 July 1789) seems particularly worthy of reexamination. The Antons (as Mozart called it) was the subject of much commentary and praise; it was performed in almost every German theatre over the next two decades, and it was translated into Czech. The success of the opera inspired six sequels and secured the place of its author, Emanuel Schikaneder, in the popular imagination of the Viennese public. This success also made possible the series of fairy-tale operas that included Mozarts Die Zauberflote (1791) . Die zween Anton was also the first original opera of Emanuel Schikaneder produced the Theater auf der Wieden after he had taken over its direction; the music was a collaborative composition by Franz Xaver Gerl, Benedikt Schack, Johann Baptist Henneberg, and probably Schikaneder himself. With the recent recovery of a Viennese manuscript copy of Die zween Anton in Hamburgs State and University Library, we can now investigate this opera in detail.