Ferdinánd Pálffy

Count Ferdinánd Pálffy de Erdőd (1 February 1774 – 4 February 1840) was a mining engineer and civil servant of the Austrian Empire who is better remembered for his role in managing the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, in pursuit of which he lost his not inconsiderable fortune and retired from his creditors in Vienna.

Under Pálffy's directorship, the Theater an der Wien saw the premiere of Helmina von Chézy's Rosamunda, which sank without a trace, save for its incidental music by Franz Schubert, whose 1820 melodrama Die Zauberharfe found eight performances at the Theater, for which Schubert dedicated to Palffy his Grande Sonata in B-flat major (D 617).

[2] He found fault with Spohr's 1813 opera Faust, so that Carl Maria von Weber arranged its premiere at the Prague Estates Theatre in 1816.

During the period of his proprietorship, which lasted until 1826, he offered opera and ballet and, to appeal to a wider Viennese audience, popular pantomime and variety acts, losing money in elaborate spectacles until he was forced to sell the theater at auction in 1826, and to disperse his library and collection of mineral specimens.

Fearing arrest for his outstanding debts, he fled Vienna for Preßburg (Bratislava) where he remained for several years.