1 - An Empire of Theatres

Summary

This chapter maps the vast web of German-language theatres that connected Central European audiences around the year 1800. Using periodicals and missives written by those active at these institutions, it investigates how the network functioned in practice as well as how it was imagined across vast distances. It explores the mobility of theatre companies to at once redraw the theatrical map of late eighteenth-century Central Europe and challenge perceptions of oppositional court and public music cultures. The Reich's theatrical network simultaneously existed in the imaginary thanks to print culture and a reading public. While touring companies made the journey from one performance location to the next, readers could be transported to theatres scattered across the Empire with the turn of a page. This rendered the network as much a political and theatrical reality as an imaginary realm, where the bandwidth of data was as important as the institutions, personnel, repertoires, and developments the information conveyed. The Empire’s musico-theatrical complex – both physical and imaginary – was the foundation upon which a shared imperial repertoire could be cultivated.