Proclamation of a Collective Viennese Identity—Aspects of the Wiener Theaterzeitung’s Reports on Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable in the 1830s

At the time Emperor Franz II was laying down the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1806, reporting on social life in Vienna received a new impetus: the Wiener Theaterzeitung was established. This article will ask whether and how this theatre newspaper, which set itself the particular task of focusing on the sensibilities of the Viennese public, defined the national or collective identity of the city. With a focus on Giacomo Meyerbeer’s extremely successful opera Robert le Diable, it will be shown how both the performances and the subsequent commentary on Robert le Diable were used to shape the nation, even as far as the specific Viennese character and the postulation of “Viennese taste” as a uniform cultural judgement. In this way, opera reporting became a means of collective formation.