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| [photo: Ludwig Angerer] |
1801-1862
Musician, operatic actor, and Viennese playwright of popular humor and satire Johann Nepomuk Nestroy was born Johann Nepomuk Eduard Ambrosius Nestroy on this day in Vienna during empirical times. Like so many talented writers of his time he was set to study and practice law, but his love of the stage and performance apparently got the best of him and he chose that path instead; he abandoned his studies altogether. He started singing opera at the professional level locally, but left for Amsterdam for a time to perform German productions there. After performing in different continental cities, he eventually returned to Vienna where he took up writing. His deeply satirical themes, complete with parodies, were an instant success. This brought him in for censorship in the 1830's, especially after his taking over "the people's theater"--the Volkstheater--from romantic writer Raimund. Nestroy was obviously dead and gone before the introduction of motion pictures in the late 1880's, but during Nestroy's lifetime a plethora of new inventions for animation were invented and introduced and, of course, so was photography itself. Nestroy was photographed dozens and dozens of times during the later half of his life, principally by prolific photographer Ludwig Angerer. It would be well into the the new century, and with the introduction of the feature film, before any of Nestroy's work was adapted for the motion picture screen. Brought to the German screen by Max Mack, who had been making films since 1911, Robert and Beltran was adapted and directed by Mack, and sporting one Ernst Lubitsch as an actor, was based on a Nestroy farce about escaped convicts. The film was released in August of 1915. The following year saw the release of the first short film based on one of his plays; Einen Jux will er sich machen was adapted and directed by Emil Leyde and released in Austria in October. There were just three more films made from his work in the silent era, the last being the comedy Frühere Verhältnisse: adapted by Viktor Klein and directed by Arthur Bergen (who was killed in Auschwitz in 1943); the film was released in June of 1927. All the films made from his works up to this point were in the German language. Likewise, the first film made from his work in the sound era was also in German; Das Einmaleins der Liebe was released in Germany in 1937. Almost two decades later, 1953 saw the use of his work on television for the first time; with Lumpazivagabundus airing in West Germany on the 8th of August. While most of remainder the, to date, of filmed productions of his work have been in German, there have been the odd-out exceptions, such as the 1991 television film Talisman in Czech. Or, much more famously: Hello, Dolly! the Gene Kelly directed 1969 musical which used comedic portions of Nestroy's work. That was taken from an famous English language stage production by Thornton Wilder. Playwright Tom Stoppard adapted On The Razzle, translated by Stephen Plaice, for the English stage in the early 1980's. There have been (so far) eight film adaptations of his work since the turn of the century the most recent of which is Der Zerrissene, fittingly from Austria. Nestroy died in Graz, located in Styria, Austria on the 25th of May in 1862 at the age of just 60. In addition to his works for the stage, he also wrote number for musical productions, including an operatic work that matched to music by Offenbach (which, I suppose would--in a funny sort of way--make it his only brush with the Romantic movement). He is buried at Vienna's Central Cemetery.
[Source: Wolfgang Ilgner (Find a Grave)]
Absolutely excellent piece by Michael Lorenz
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