Palace Theater Dessau

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The Dessau Castle Theater was an existing one from 1777 to 1830 by theater venue in the Royal Palace of Anhalt Dukes in the old town of Dessau .

history

There must have been a small stage at the palace as early as 1776, as an entry in the diary of Princess Luise on October 29, 1776 noted: “ An actor named Berger performed a few plays at the small palace theater. “In the winter of 1777, a wooden theater was built into the“ Great Hall ”in the south wing of the castle, which had not been completed after previous renovations, for twenty days. According to his own plans, the construction management was with Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff . The reason for the construction was the expected visit of Prince Heinrich of Prussia , which was to be given a particularly festive design by means of the theater: “Ariadne auf Naxos” by Georg Benda was planned for the performance. The visit did not take place because the Prince was ill; “Ariadne” was nevertheless performed in a small circle with the participation of the court musicians under Friedrich Wilhelm Rust and members of the Societätstheater .

On March 6, 1777, on the occasion of the visit of the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt - Prince Leopold III's father-in-law . Friedrich Franz - a performance of the comic opera "Die Dorfgala" by Anton Schweitzer took place: this occasion has since marked the official opening of the castle theater.

Princess Luise , who received acting lessons at a young age, promoted and accompanied the activities on the new stage. The Gothaer Theater-Journal , a theater journal of the time, reported: “... Anyone who sees how far this society of lovers has come ... will admit to me that they can bring it to a fairly perfect level. And now you can rightly place some of these lovers at the side of our best professional actors. "

With the arrival of the Bossann Theater Society in 1794, the era of professional court theater began in Dessau . The stage in the Residenzschloss was only occasionally used for courtly festivities. Only after the court theater building was closed for five years in 1810 as a result of the scarce financial means due to war events and in the period of a further closure from 1827 to 1829, the palace stage was once again honored with performances by the members of the lover's circle and individual smaller traveling or temporary artist groups .

After 1830 the room of the castle theater was included in the living area of ​​the ducal family, which was redesigned for the changed demands on living quality and space requirements.

Theater building

The palace theater was laid out in an amphitheatrical form by Erdmannsdorff under the impression of role models he saw as a companion of Prince Franz on the trip to Italy in 1765 . Two boxes of honor fasten the stage to the side, in addition there were five rows of seats in a semicircle surrounding the stage, rising and flanking the central royal box. The total space available to the theater was around forty by thirteen meters.

literature

  • Bernhard Heese: "Dessauer Chronik" / second volume, Heimatbuchverlag B. Heese, Dessau 1927
  • Franz Brückner: "House book of the city of Dessau" / vol. 17, Dessau City Council / City Archives, Dessau 1989
  • Hartmut Runge: "Dessauer Theaterbilder", Anhaltische Verlagsgesellschaft, Dessau 1994