The Nuremberg-born composer and organist Johann Philipp Krieger (1649–1725) served in the court orchestra of Margrave Christian Ernst in Bayreuth and later oversaw the ensemble as court kappelmeister. Afterwards he travelled to Italy and studied the genre of opera in Venice, among other places. In 1677 he was hired as a chamber musician and organist at the court of Duke August of Saxe-Weissenfels in Halle, where he rose to become vice kapellmeister. In 1680 he moved with Duke Johann Adolf I to the newly built Neu-Augustusburg residence in Weissenfels, where he now served as kapellmeister. He created numerous instrumental works and pieces of festive and banquet music for the Weissenfels court and was responsible for the blossoming of opera there. Only a few libretti and musical fragments of his stage works have survived – for example, Der großmütige Scipio Africanus (The Magnanimous Scipio Africanus, 1690) and Der wahrsagende Wunderbrunnen (The Fortune-Telling Miracle Well, 1690).