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Theater
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Theater
in Vienna 1900 Carltheater, which opened in 1847, stood on the site of the old Theater
in der Leopoldstadt. During its opening in December that year, Karl
Carl in his speech dedicated the theater to the service of the public
as a monument to his gratitude. The audience of Carltheater was mainly
from Leopoldstadt. The architects of Carltheater were Edward van der
Null and August Sicard von Sicardsburg, who later also designed the
new Opera House. The theater looked like a bourgeois imitation of a
grand opera house. By 1866, the then lessee of Carltheater established
its reputation as an operetta theater. By 1880, Carltheater was either
dominated by French operetta or by light French comedies. When Franz
Jauner, an actor and producer took over the Carltheater in 1872, some
of his biggest successes were with translations of hits from Paris like
Sardou’s ‘Fernande’ in October 1872, ‘Tricoche
et Cacolet’ in January 1873 etc. In 1870’s it was targeting
a predominantly middle-class audience. When Jauner took over the direction
of the Carltheater for the second time in 1895, he had the whole interior
reconstructed, closing the top most gallery, lowering the ceiling and
installing electric lighting. In 1885, Adam Muller-Guttenbrunn, a critic
from Guttenbrunn published a polemical booklet in 1880 entitled ‘Wien
war eine Theaterstadt’ (Vienna used to be a city of theater).
He stated the argument as ‘Viennese theater has declined into
a state of intellectual bankruptcy which betrayed the ethical and didactic
purpose of the theater as an institution’. The argument led to
the conclusion that theaters should be reorganized to develop specialties
like Carltheater playing comedies. In 1898, when the Carltheater presented the first Viennese production
of Schnitzler’s ‘Freiwild’, which is about dueling
in accordance with the military code of honor, the play was attacked
not just in pro-military papers but also in anti-Semitic press. ‘Kikeriki’
published a scurrilous condemnation of it as the product of a ‘cowardly
Jewish spirit’ expressing ‘ Jewish attitudes’ incompetent
to treat the honor of Aryan women. The commercial theaters upto World War 1 were indeed largely dominated
by operetta, not only Theater an der Wien and Carltheater but also other
theaters like Raimund theater. The predominance of operetta did not
change with the outbreak of the war. On the contrary, operetta appealed
to a new wave of escapism, just as it had done amid the economic and
social problems of the 1870’s and 1880’s. Indeed, even light
comedy of all kinds had a similar escapist appeal. Bibliography: Yates, W.E. Theater in Vienna, a critical history, 1776-1995.Cambridge
University Press,1996.
