Biography
Johann Nestroy was born on 7 December 1801 in Vienna, the son of a lawyer, and abandoned his law studies to pursue a career as a singer, making his debut in 1822 as Sarastro in Mozart's "The Magic Flute". After engagements in Amsterdam, Brünn and Graz, he shifted increasingly from opera to comic spoken theatre and was engaged in 1831 by director Carl Carl at the Theater an der Wien, where he had his breakthrough as an author in 1833 with "Der böse Geist Lumpazivagabundus". In 1845 he moved with Carl to the Leopoldstädter Theater, which after Carl's death in 1854 continued as the Carltheater under Nestroy's own direction until his retirement from the stage in 1860. Across some 80 farces, parodies and folk plays, he combined verbal wit with sharp social criticism and repeatedly ran into trouble with pre-1848 censorship. He died on 25 May 1862 in Graz and, alongside Ferdinand Raimund, is regarded as the consummate master of Old Viennese folk comedy.
On Stagelog
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