Theater Decorations in Pressburg in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

In 1776 Count Georg Csáky de Körösszegh had the first brick-and-mortar Municipal Theater built in Pressburg (present-day Bratislava). He thereby completed the stabilization process of theatrical life in the city and opened a new chapter in the cultural history of this ancient coronation city. The project was authored by Matthias (Matthäus) Walch who, besides the theater building, also designed a dance hall (Redoute), which was constructed later by Csáky’s heirs in 1793. The authors of the new decorations were Vinzenz Anton Joseph Fanti, a painter and inspector of the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna, and Franz Anton Hofmann. In the early nineteenth century, Carl Maurer, a scenic painter and designer from the Eszterházy residence in Eisenstadt, worked in Pressburg. His sketchbook and a collection of his designs, both deposited in Čaplovičova Knižnica in Dolný Kubín, are unique sources of the decorating practice in Central Europe and document Maurer’s works for the Municipal Theater. In 1886, the city had a new building of the Municipal Theater built (known today as the historical building of the Slovenské Národné Divadlo), designed by the Viennese architects Ferdinand Fellner jr. and Hermann Helmer. The first version of the plans was completed in 1881, but due to revised safety regulations after the Ringtheater Fire in Vienna, it had to be significantly revised. The second version contained a Redoute hall in addition to the theater but, after extensive discussions, the municipality decided to erect only the theater building. The authors of the new decorations were the scenic painters and decorators Carlo Brioschi and Hermann Burghart sr., working for the Viennese Hofoper. In the late nineteenth century, Otto Wintersteiner and his son, Gustav Wintersteiner, worked for the Municipal Theater. The latter authored the sketches in the three albums of theater decorations preserved in the Galéria mesta Bratislavy that document the decorating practice in municipal theaters at the end of the nineteenth century.