Haupt-und-Staatsaktionen

…indigenous drama developed known as Haupt-und-Staatsaktionen. As this term implies, such plays dealt with the intrigues of high characters in high places and abounded with blustering rhetoric and gory sensationalism. The last English troupes left Germany in 1659, by which time the Italian style of staging, with its perspective scenery,…

…vernacular, coarsely humorous plays called Haupt und Staatsaktionen (“chief and state plays”). Fourteen of these plays attributable to Stranitzky still exist; they reveal how he adapted opera libretti for his materials. A year before his death, Stranitzky called Gottfried Prehauser to Vienna to portray Hanswurst and manage the company, but…