The libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer is based on the controversial biographical novel, "Der König von Amerika" by Peter Stephan Jungk. (When he was a child, Jungk's parents received frequent visits from their friend, physicist Heinz Haber, who at the time worked for Disney as a scientific consultant.) The novel imagines the last three months of the life of Walt Disney from the tales of the fictional Austrian cartoonist Wilhelm Dantine, who – before being fired – had worked for Disney between 1940 and 1950. The creator of Mickey Mouse is depicted as something of a megalomaniac racist, misogynist (only men were allowed to draw, women were only allowed coloring) anti-Semite and Nazi sympathiser, and for exposing three of his employees before the committee on un-American activities. (Disney, played in the opera by Christopher Purves, comments on the march on Washington in August 1963: "Where leads all this freedom, negroes walking to Washington, the misfits who fornicate like rabbits?" .)