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2 unusual facts about Franz Anton von Sporck


Franz Anton von Sporck

Many creative operatic works were first performed in the Sporck theater, including the first opera to use the original settings and character names from the tradition of Don Juan dramatizations: the opera La pravità castigata (1730) with words by Antonio Denzio and music mainly by Antonio Caldara.

Count Sporck's intellectual interests led him to found a branch of Freemasonry in Bohemia, but they also had the effect of arousing the suspicion of the Habsburg ecclesiastical authorities for his flirtations with Jansenist philosophy and anti-Jesuitical polemicism.


Antonio Denzio

The company was first brought to Bohemia under the patronage of Count Franz Anton von Sporck, who had it play at his palace at Kuks in northwest Bohemia in the summer of 1724.


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