Urban institutions and the formation of a theatre repertoire in Amsterdam and Hamburg (1675-1750)

The usual delimitation in carrying out literary-historical research still is formed by the political and linguistic unity of ‘the nation.’ For this reason, the regional and local aspects of historical literary developments have long remained underexposed. This is also true for research into German and Dutch theatre history, a field of research explored mainly by literary historians. With the exception of court theatre, public theatre in Germany and the Netherlands between 1675 and 1750 was chiefly centred in an urban environment. My study concerns a comparison between the theatres of the two most important theatre cities at the time: the Amsterdam Schouwburg and the Hamburg Opera. Their functioning in a contemporaneous urban context provides the focus for an investigation that emphatically does not involve the (later) national significance of the two theatres. The comparison is oriented first of all on the question of which institutions interfered directly and indirectly with the formation of repertoire in the Schouwburg and Opera; and secondly, on the question of what views and considerations, such as emanated by these institutions, underlay the eventual repertoire selection