Principál Václav Mihule na dvoře vévodském
Entrepreneur Václav Mihule at the Ducal Residence

Summary/Abstract: Theatrical activities of Václav Mihule (1758 – after 1808) are documented at his various positions in 19 European cities. Born in Prague Mihule left his home at a young age. His earliest experience was as an actor (1781–89), traveling to distant places such as Warszawa (1781), St. Peter‑ burg (1784–86), Königsberg (1787–88), Mainz and Frankfurt a. M. (1788–89). His first Prague ensemble (1789) was a collaboration with Jean Butteau, the company played at Thun ‑Palace Theatre at the Lesser Town of Prague. Later he directed the ensemble Vlastenské divadlo (Patriotic Theatre) in the Theatre U Hybernů (in summer in Karlovy Vary) and the German company at the Nostitz Theatre. After his abrupt departure from Prague in mid 1793 he became a theatre director in Augsburg (1793–94), in Nürnberg, Ansbach, Erlangen, Ulm and Nördlingen (1794–97), Stuttgart (1797), Wiener Neustadt (1797/98), Olomouc (1800–02), Opava (1802–04), Prešov (1805) a Košice (1804–08). He seems to have ended his career in Košice, where he may have died. In the time from 21. 12. 1796 till 13. 9. 1797 he led on lease the Court Theatre Company of Friedrich Eugen II. of Württemberg in Stuttgart. It was in Stuttgart for the first time, when the Court Theatre was rented to a theatre entrepreneur. The Duke tryed in this way to keep the theatre running in the bad economic situation in the course of the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797). For the director Mihule was the offered contract for 6 years – after experience with various theaters in the cities – an extraordinary occasion to achieve a firmly established place of work with above standard conditions. It is possible to describe and characterize the Stuttgart period of the entrepreneur Mihule on the basis of archive documents and ac‑ count books (aspect of organization) and periodicals (theatre repertory). Some features of the abilities of actors and some reflections of the state of the Court Theatre in Stuttgart bring diary notes by J. W. Goethe.

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