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

Two <strong>Opera</strong>s or One – or None
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lasted until mid-November, and Bergbom himself was willing to accept a
compromise to get the New Theatre, but by then the performers from the
Finnish <strong>Opera</strong> “felt insulted by the unwillingness [‘the lack of noblesse’] of
the theatre management to support their patriotic initiative.” As a group,
they refused to perform in the New Theatre. This unexpected refusal is the
only explanation for why the troupe was suddenly without a professional
orchestra in a venue (the Arkadia) that was fully booked for regular theatre
performances in Russian.
For Bergbom and certainly for Faltin, the first choice was to perform
Trubaduuri on the stage of the New Theatre. Arkadia was only a second
option. The sudden difficulties in the last weeks of the production can be
explained only by this conclusion. It was then difficult to find free evenings
in the Arkadia Theatre, where the Russian drama troupe rehearsed and performed.
It was especially difficult to find evenings for the general rehearsals
of Trubaduuri. On those very same evenings the New Theatre Orchestra
had an obligation for the performances in their own Theatre. And in its free
moments the orchestra was booked to rehearse for the inaugural festivities
to be held on 26 November 1870 to celebrate the opening of the Student
House (Ylioppilastalo, today called the Old Student House) in the centre of
Helsinki. They were to perform a cantata under Fredrik Pacius, the grand
old man of music in Finland. The inauguration had been postponed from its
originally scheduled date in September. Richard Faltin did not have many
options. There was only a small number of musicians left among the members
of the amateur Academic Orchestra, various professionals and those
military musicians who were not playing with the Theatre Orchestra.
There was not a single complete run-through of Trubaduuri before its
opening, so the premiere (on 25 November 1870) was “half-way catastrophic.”
But the four subsequent performances went better. The orchestra obtained
more players, and audiences were enthusiastic. The Arkadia Theatre
was now identified as the house for performances by the Finnish <strong>Opera</strong>,
and the theatre began to acquire its Fennoman aura. Bergbom himself still
wanted to stage operas in the Swedish Theatre, an ambition he would hold
for the next ten years. But now it was the group of the Fennoman amateurs
themselves who had refused a joint arrangement.