ABSTRACT
The improvements made in the Weimar Theatre from about 1798 may be considered from two closely related aspect, that of acting and that of the repertoire. The repertoire must be unique in German annals for its combination of German works of high merit with a most cosmopolitan range of translations. The decided improvement in the repertoire began in 1798, when Wallensteins Lager was first produced at the opening of the Weimar season. It is interesting to note that the French classical tradition exercised a renewed influence on Weimar through Wilhelm von Humboldt’s enthusiastic descriptions of the acting of Talma. The difficulty in Weimar was not so much with the ideas as with the unmusical, jerky verse, but after a few performances Graff, as Nathan, made a success of it and the play gradually came to be one of the classics of the German theatre.
