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

Two <strong>Opera</strong>s or One – or None
Kiseleff’s invitation to perform Il Trovatore (Trubaduuri) in Finnish
in the New Theatre (October 1870)
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Having turned his back on the Swedish Theatre Company, Kaarlo Bergbom
was again busy with Suomalainen Seura and its planned performances,
which he wanted to hold in the New Theatre. Yet the Seura did not want
to pay the high rent that the New Theatre demanded or the fees they had
required for the evenings of Lea and Martha the previous year. The idealistic
issue for the Fennomans, as they understood it, was answered with
“brutal commercialism” as they and many after them put it. The Swedish
Theatre administrators, however, were responsible for their debts and commitments,
which the young idealists did not want to hear about.
In the year 1870 Bergbom arranged more performances. At the beginning
of April, his own 2-act drama Paola Moroni was performed in Finnish
at the New Theatre with a joint cast of professionals and amateurs. In May
Weber’s Preciosa was ready in a Finnish translation and was given on the
stage in the Arkadia Theatre. The Theatre Orchestra from the New Theatre,
conducted by Richard Faltin, was hired for the occasion. The audience,
mostly relatives of the performers, was enthusiastic, the performance was
repeated twice, and thereafter, it was moved to the New Theatre, which
was then available. The audience response was positive and along with the
better stage conditions, was an encouragement of the idea that a full-scale
opera could be performed in Finnish.
The question was, which opera? The process of making this decision, in
the summer of 1870, can be traced only in part. Some young Finns, such as
Emilie Mechelin, Ida Basilier, and Emmy Strömer (later Achté), had been
studying voice in Paris. They returned to Helsinki in the late spring of 1870.
Probably Bergbom and Nikolas Achté first asked Emmy Strömer to appear,
but after only one year of study as a dramatic soprano, she felt she had to
refuse. Her classmate Ida Basilier offered to perform in Les noces de Jeannette,
a musical comedy for a coloratura soprano by Victor Massé. Basilier
may also have suggested Lucia di Lammermoor, because she could have
sung the role of Lucia. At first, this idea was adopted, but during the summer
of 1870 the choice shifted to Verdi’s Il Trovatore, with the Finnish title
Trubaduri (today Trubaduuri). Meanwhile, there were problems of assembling
a sufficient number of competent soloists.
The rehearsals took place in October and November of 1870, but Bergbom’s
arrangements were not very systematic. What had been Kaarlo
Bergbom’s real plans for the production? For some reason he had not even
booked the New Theatre’s Orchestra for the rehearsals or for the sched-