The three decades Haydn spent in the service of the Esterházy family proved one of the most artistically fruitful relationships in the history of musical patronage. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Esterházys were the wealthiest and most powerful family of the Hungarian aristocracy and had its seat at Eisenstadt, a small town in the Burgenland hills south of Vienna, close to the current Austro-Hungarian border. Here, in the 1750s, Prince Paul Anton Esterházy founded a permanent orchestra and established seasons of theatrical and operatic performances. Haydn was engaged to the court in 1761, first as Deputy Kapellmeister, then as Kapellmeister.