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

156 Ulla-Britta Broman-Kananen
A major problem that all three opera companies shared was that there were
simply not enough (available) vernacular and professional opera singers in
either country for opera’s needs. This problem caused tensions in the daily
life of each opera companies, especially between the Boards and the directors;
as a rule the Boards were politically and ideologically engaged, while
the directors’ first concern was artistic and creating a professional company.
The tensions between the Boards and the directors sometimes escalated
into real crises when the Boards interfered too much in the daily planning
of a house. These clashes and crises will be of a special interest in this chapter
as they depict the daily life of running an operatic enterprise that was
fuelled by political and nationalist ideologies. 2
Why would comparing opera companies in Christiania and Helsinki be of
any interest? Both cities seem to be situated somewhere outside opera’s
major avenues throughout the nineteenth century, and the operatic productions
in each city have certainly not been remembered for their grandeur, if
at all. The answer to these questions is simply that the neglect of opera in
these cities is not a sign of their insignificance, either for contemporaries
or even for the course of history. Quite the opposite is true. We should instead
ask why these episodes have attracted such little attention from later
historians. There are at least three answers: 1) all three opera companies
failed to become permanent; hence, they are difficult to dovetail with a teleological
view of history, which takes the present time as its starting point
(Engman 1995, p. 12); 2) the episodes are excellent examples of a transnational
Norden, especially from the viewpoint of the artists, who moved from
one country to another in search of job opportunities. This in turn goes
against the pre-suppositions of writing the history of a nation as the main
agent with the present borders of a nation pre-determined; 3) looking at
opera with a national gaze narrows historians’ view of performances, musical
works or unusual accomplishments (and not only in this case), which
somehow bolster the uniqueness of a given nation. 3 The aim of this chapter
2 This chapter does not provide the reader with a detailed history of the three opera
houses. Instead, it follows certain critical thresholds in the trajectory of these
enterprises, which highlight the main argument here: the staging of a national language
through opera. For those interested in the history of the operas at the theatres, the
following works can be recommmended: Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä (hence EAH) 1906-
1910; Blanc 1899; Eckhoff Kindem 1941; Lampila 1997; Nordensvan 1918; Qvamme
2004. Unfortunately, history has almost totally neglected the New Theatre’s opera
performances. Not even the one existing work about the New Theatre (Qvarnström
1946) includes much about its opera performances.
3 Ilona Pikkanen (2010) has analysed and compared the histories of the two main
national theatres in Finland and Norway; Eliel Aspelin Haapkylä’s extensive history