Career
Nestroy was born in Vienna, where he was a law student from 1817 to 1822, before abandoning his studies to become a singer. He joined the Theater am Kärntnertor, beginning with Sarastro in The Magic Flute on 24 August 1822. After a year of singing in Vienna, he went to Amsterdam where he appeared in baritone roles for two years at the local German Theatre. From 1825 to 1831 he accepted engagements to sing and act in Brno, Graz, Pressburg, Klagenfurt, Vienna and Lemberg. He then returned to his native Vienna and started to write, as well as continue performing.
Nestroy's career as a playwright was an immediate success: his 1833 play Der böse Geist Lumpazivagabundus was a major hit. He soon became a leading figure in Austrian culture and society. Nestroy succeeded Ferdinand Raimund as the leading actor-dramatist on the Volkstheater, the Viennese commercial stage or 'people's theatre'.
Whereas Raimund concentrated on romantic and magical fantasies, Nestroy used comedy for parody and criticism. Working at the time of conservative minister Klemens von Metternich, he had to carefully draft his plays to skirt the strict censorship in place. His interest in word play was legendary, and his characters often mixed Viennese German with less-than-successful attempts at more "educated" speech. Music held an important role in his work, with songs elaborating the theme or helping on with the plot.
Nestroy wrote nearly eighty comedies between the 1830s and the 1850s. Among the most important were Der böse Geist Lumpazivagabundus, Liebesgeschichten und Heiratssachen, Der Talisman (made into the 1939 musical comedy Titus macht Karriere by Edmund Nick), Einen Jux will er sich machen (translated as On the Razzle by Tom Stoppard in 1981) and Der Zerrissene, all of which were marked by social criticism and biting satire. He died in Graz, Austria.
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