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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company and two separate drama troupes, one in Swedish and one in Finnish.
Representatives from the Clergy Estate demanded that Yrjö-Koskinen,
the Fennoman leader, should first issue a proclamation assuring that the
Swedish language would not be abolished from Finland – the most extreme
measure advocated by the radicals in the Fennoman party. There were also
some Finnish-speaking representatives in the Peasants Estate who were
ready to let the Finnish <strong>Opera</strong> fall, wanting all the subsidies for the Finnish
activities to go to the Drama Department. Finally, in April of 1877 the
Estates of the Nobility and the Bourgeois rejected the plan for a “Swedish
Drama and a Finnish <strong>Opera</strong>,” while the estates with a Fennoman majority,
the Clergy and Peasants, supported it. But as the matter belonged to
the sphere of private enterprise, the Estates could do nothing more. (Talonpoikaissäädyn
pöytäkirjat 1877.)
The Government appointed a committee with representation from both
parties, Fennoman and Svecoman. There was a public vote on its proposals
in which the Fennoman proposal received the most votes. But the New
Theatre House Owners’ Company was independent. It had several rental
offers by 9 May. In accordance with capitalist principles, a price competition
should now have occurred with the best offer being the winner. Instead, the
New Theatre House Owners, with a huge majority of the shares, decided
once again to lease the New Theatre to the Warrants Society of the Swedish
Theatre Company for the next five years (1877–1883), even though theirs
was not the best proposal. But at least their future was on a more solid
economic basis.
The Fennomans were defeated, and licking their wounds, tried to manage
their debts of more than 100,000 Finnish marks. The result was a new
Shareholders’ Company (Osakeyhtiö /Aktiebolag), which would start a Finnish
Theatre with a clean slate. All the old debts were categorised as personal
debts of the Bergboms, who therefore also owned all of the sets, props
and costumes. The work started by buying the costumes from the Bergboms
for the use of the new company. Then year by year the debts would be
mortgaged by the new Finnish Theatre Company Ltd. (Aspelin-Haapkylä
1907, II, pp. 351–355.)
There had been unanimous will within the Fennoman party (i.e. the
loose group of Yrjö-Koskinen’s men and women) to go on with the Finnish
<strong>Opera</strong>. But the Bergboms themselves were exhausted. (E. Bergbom to B.
Elfving, 13 February1877, SKS). Financially, the <strong>Opera</strong> could continue only
for two more seasons. The last new production by Bergbom, in the spring
of 1879, was Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. But for the whole cultural map of