About the work
Local farce with songs in three acts by Johann Nestroy, first performed on 17 January 1837 at the Theater an der Wien as a benefit performance for the author. Nestroy transplanted the plot of Louis Angely's Parisian vaudeville 'Wohnungen zu vermieten' (1832) into contemporary Vienna; the full announcement added two further flats to the title, one to be given up in the suburb and one with a garden to be had in Hietzing.
Plot
The rentier Gundlhuber is looking for a flat, and his search becomes entangled with several love stories: a dispute over a marriage contract, a lover hidden in a wardrobe, and the wax-figure cabinet of Madame Chaly all add to the confusion. A supposed murder pushes the plot to the brink of catastrophe before every complication resolves happily in the end.
Cultural significance
The premiere turned into a scandal: audiences hissed and stamped the play off the stage after only two performances, feeling stung by its sharp satire of Viennese petty-bourgeois life. Only a 1924 revival brought the work success, and Karl Kraus later made it known again through his readings.