From real tennis court to Court Theatre

From real tennis court
to Court Theatre
Grand opera and theatre productions despite declining
finances? A new form of management assures that the
Empress can continue to enjoy her favourite forms of
entertainment: she grants a lease on a disused real
tennis court for use as a theatre.
Shortly after Maria Theresa ascended the throne an
opportunity arose of setting up a theatre at minimal expense
by granting a lease on the disused real tennis court at the
Hofburg. This became known as the ‘Theatre beside the Burg’
or Burgtheater for short, and stood on Michaelerplatz. Dating
from 1540, this building had been used for playing jeu de
paume, a forerunner of lawn tennis, until the beginning of the
eighteenth century. There was a total of four of these courts in
Vienna, commemorated today in street names such as
Ballgasse or Ballhausplatz. The interiors of these barn-like
buildings were painted black, so that it was easier to see the
white balls used in the game. Over time, all these courts were
eventually converted into theatres.
Back in 1720, Charles VI had begun to assign the
administration of the court theatres to lessees called
Apaldatores who were subsidized by the court with fixed sums
of money. His daughter continued this system and in 1741
granted a lease on the former real tennis court to the
‘entrepreneur of the court operas, serenatas and the holy
tombs’, Carl Joseph de Selliers, ‘that he may furnish it as an
opera house and theatre at his own expense’. The exterior and
maintenance was the responsibility of the Hofbauamt (court
office in charge of building works) and was to be ‘achieved at
the expense of official court funds’..
Selliers was contracted “there daily to produce to the several
diversion of the public and Her Majesty either an opera or a
comedy, German or foreign, as requested by the Court, in
return for which he may take payment, to be set by himself
according to the differences in the seating, to be taken from
the public to be admitted, and thus enjoy the use of
the theatre.”
In addition Selliers had taken a lease on the Kärntnertortheater,
which he also ran himself.
From the construction accounts it is evident that the
remodelling of the real tennis court, proposed by a partnership
of aristocrats in 1748, during the course of which the Redoute
ballrooms were also built, amounted to a complete rebuilding of
the existing structure: 8,865 cartloads of rubble were removed
and 198,240 bricks used. Work on the construction continued
night and day, while performances continued to be given. In
May 1748 the theatre – ‘most splendidly enlarged and
decorated’ – was opened.
Selliers eventually became bankrupt, and the management of
the theatre reverted to the court. Joseph II promoted the
establishment of a national theatre that would serve the
‘Publico’ as well as merely courtly concerns.
Author
Julia Teresa Friehs
Literature
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