Carltheater
Carltheater
Theatre in Vienna, Austria
The Carltheater was a theatre in Vienna. It was in the suburbs in Leopoldstadt at Praterstraße 31 (at that time called Jägerzeile).
It was the successor to the Leopoldstädter Theater. After a series of financial difficulties, that theater had been sold in 1838 to the director, Carl Carl, who continued to run it in parallel to his Theater an der Wien until 1845. Two years later, the building was partially demolished and rebuilt following the plans of architects August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, who would later design the Vienna State Opera.
The theatre was opened under the name Carltheater in the same year, 1847. Many Alt-Wiener Volkstheater pieces by Johann Nepomuk Nestroy premiered here; between 1854 and 1860, Nestroy was the director of the theatre. In subsequent years, many well-known Viennese playwrights wrote pieces for the Carltheater and reinforced its reputation as the favoured opera house for Viennese folk-pieces and operettas.
After a rapid changeover of directors in the 20th century, the theatre became unprofitable, and was finally closed in 1929.
In 1944, the auditorium of the theatre was almost entirely destroyed in a bomb attack. The artistically valuable facade was, however, still remarkably intact after the war. In 1951 it was demolished, with neighbouring building which had not been damaged in the war. Nowadays, the site is host to the "Galaxy"-building. A few years ago there was a plaque in Praterstraße, marking the former location of the theatre, but this is gone too now.