page_title: Abel Seyler
section_title: Seyler Theatre Company (1769–1779)
hierarchical_section_title: Abel Seyler / Seyler as a theatre principal / Seyler Theatre Company (1769–1779)
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Porträt des Schauspielers Conrad Ekhof
context_page_description: Abel Seyler was a Swiss-born theatre director and former merchant banker, who was regarded as one of the great theatre principals of 18th century Europe. He was "the leading patron of German theatre" in his lifetime, and is credited with introducing Shakespeare to a German language audience, and with promoting the concept of a national theatre in the tradition of Ludvig Holberg, the Sturm und Drang playwrights, and German opera. Already in his lifetime, he was described as "one of German art's most meritorious men."
  The son of a Basel Reformed priest, Seyler moved to London and then to Hamburg as a young adult, and established himself as a merchant banker in the 1750s. During the Seven Years' War and its immediate aftermath his bank Seyler & Tillemann engaged in an ever-increasing and complex speculation with financial instruments and went spectacularly bankrupt with enormous debts in the wake of the Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763. A flamboyant bon vivant who was regarded with suspicion in Hamburg, Seyler symbolized a new and more aggressive form of capitalism.
context_section_description: In 1769 Seyler founded the National Theatre's effective successor, the Seyler Theatre Company, together with Konrad Ekhof, Sophie Hensel and some other actors. The Seyler Company became one of the most famous theatre companies of Europe during the period 1769–79 and was regarded as "the best theatre company in Germany at that time." While the National Theatre had avoided musical theatre, Seyler appointed Anton Schweitzer as music director, charged with adding opera to the spoken repertory, and the Seyler Company came to play a major role both in the development of a German opera tradition and in the promotion and popularisation of the Sturm und Drang dramas.
  For most of its existence, the Seyler Company comprised around 60 members, and included an orchestra, a ballet, house dramatists and set designers. The company was one of the first theatre companies to maintain a permanent orchestra. Over the next ten years the company travelled extensively, and stayed for longer periods at several courts of Europe. Theatre companies of the era, especially travelling ones, thought of themselves as extended "families."
caption: Seyler's long-time collaborator, the actor Konrad Ekhof, regarded as Germany's finest actor of the 18th century
exif: {}