Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

Two <strong>Opera</strong>s or One – or None
129
von Flotow’s Martha. The Swedish Theatre had been rented for a soirée
arranged by an art-orientated group of young academics and music lovers.
The “legendary 10th of May 1869” opened with the overture to Flotow’s
Alessandro Stradella followed by a performance of Lea, a Finnish-language
drama by Aleksis Kivi, with the guest appearance of the leading Swedenborn
actress, Hedvig Charlotte Forsman, who memorised her part without
knowing Finnish. 1 The next was a tableau vivant on a poem by Runeberg
(Molnets broder), glorifying a fallen soldier in the war of 1808–1809. The
evening then ended with the second act of Flotow’s Martha oder Jahrmarkt
in Richmond, sung in Finnish by five soloists and a chorus. The orchestra
was the professional Theatre Orchestra of the New Theatre house, conducted
by Reinhold Littmarck; the chorus and the performers in the tableau
consisted of students and daughters from the “better families”. The five soloists
in Martha came from the same circles. The enthusiasm of the invited
audience has made this date a landmark in Finnish cultural history.
This one evening also made the 26-year-old Kaarlo Bergbom indispensable
to all Finnish-language theatrical endeavours. The party leader Yrjö-
Koskinen understood the enormous social and ideological power of a gathering
at the theatre or the opera house. Such an activity – in Finnish – he
believed, should be arranged as soon as possible with the help of a new
Finnish cultural association, Suomalainen Seura, launched some months
later. For Yrjö-Koskinen’s political ambition, the capital Helsinki was the
most difficult place to win sympathisers for the radical language programme
of the Fennomans.
The Swedish Theatre had a deficit for the 1868–1869 season. The parttime
director, Nikolai Kiseleff, had to cover the loss out of his own pocket,
or more precisely, from the coffers of the Kiseleff family enterprise. In May
1869 Kiseleff resigned, dissatisfied with some of his colleagues on the theatre’s
Board of Directors. Did Kiseleff suggest that one way to build audi-
1 Hedvig Charlotte Forsman (1838–1907) was born in Stockholm, where she received
her professional training in acting. In 1858 she made her Helsinki debut, returning
there frequently. Her style was “dramatic”, and by the end of the 1860s she became
the leading lady in the New Theatre. She also starred in Bergbom’s two dramas.
Married (from 1866 to 1872) to a talented actor, Frithjof Raa, she is also known as Mrs.
Charlotte Raa. After her husband’s death she moved to Christiania (Oslo), when she
married (1874) a Norwegian journalist, Kristian Winterhjelm. She is most often known
as Hedvig Raa-Winterhjelm, although that was never her official name. In addition to
being an iconic figure in the Finnish Theatre, Raa-Winterhjelm is known for being the
first Scandinavian Mrs Alving (in 1883, opposite August Lindberg’s Osvald) in Ibsen’s
controversial play Ghosts (Gengangere). Later she taught privately, occasionally visiting
Finland, and died in Stockholm