ABSTRACT
Karl-Eugen’s preferences were naturally for operatic spectacles which entailed the most luxurious presentation. Servandony, the man who according to Frederick II should have been with the King of Poland to complete his ruin and whom Maubert calls the ‘terror of the Courts of Versailles and Vienna’, was to cost Karl-Eugen half his revenues. During the most brilliant period of his reign he often swallowed up 400,000 florins a year. The conflagration destroyed Karl-Eugen’s private apartments and the Duke was forced to take refuge in another part of the building. Karl-Alexander had lived there at rare intervals and so far Karl-Eugen had only visited it either to inspect the manufacture of porcelain, of which he had assumed the direction since 1758, or to decide upon certain works. Servandony one day submitted to Karl-Eugen the plan for a diversion, warning him that it would be particularly costly.
