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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New Theatre would continue to house the Swedish Theatre Company for
the years 1872 to 1877. The status quo in the New Theatre thus prevailed.
The public debate had a logical consequence: Why did the Fennomans
not establish their own Warrants Society and a Finnish theatre company?
This need was indeed finally met, and it came on the initiative of the party
leader, Yrjö S. Yrjö-Koskinen, at the end of May. Some five to seven dramatic
actors were hired, and in June of 1872 Kaarlo Bergbom was appointed
executive director of the Finnish Theatre Company (Suomalainen teatteri).
The goal was to begin staging operas the next season.
The Finnish Theatre Company was launched with a Drama Department
(Puhe-osasto), which was placed in the hands of the actor Oskar Gröneqvist-
Wilho (1840–1883), who had been trained in Stockholm (1863–64). As the
stage director (regisseur), Gröneqvist-Wilho supervised rehearsals and was
the principal actor for the next eight years. The first six months of Bergbom’s
leadership were spent in preparations for the company’s first tour
of provincial capitals. After the company’s inaugural performances in Pori
(October 1873), Bergbom began engaging singers for the Lyrical Department
(Laulu-osasto), then called the Finnish <strong>Opera</strong> Company (Suomalainen
ooppera). However, singers were hesitant to commit to Bergbom’s adventure,
as Kiseleff was making more remunerative and secure offers at the
Swedish Theatre. (See the article in this volume by Ulla-Britta Broman-
Kananen.) The next incident occurred in December of 1872.
Bergbom summoned to court for publicly offending Kiseleff et al.
(the spring of 1873)
Bergbom’s next fiery debate – a distant echo of the previous spring – came
in December of 1872. Bergbom was incensed over the Swedish Theatre
Company’s projected performance of a drama by Aleksis Kivi called
Karkurit (The Refugees), translated into Swedish as Flyktingarna by the
young writer, Rafael Hertzberg (1845–1896). This choice of play must have
been Kiseleff’s in a bid gradually to “domesticate” his theatre by having
the talented Kivi’s Finnish-language play translated into Swedish. Bergbom
publicly questioned whether the Theatre or Herzberg personally wanted to
pay royalties to the author, who was lying ill in very poor conditions after
having been treated in a mental asylum. Bergbom declared himself Kivi’s
representative, which was true, although he had no legal document to that
effect. Four years earlier this responsibility had been explicitly stated in