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

Staging a national language
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Koskinen. The tensions between Bergbom and the Fennoman movement
emerged only later when the opera’s budget begun to show a deficit, yet the
Fennoman party nevertheless demanded that it continue. 19
As a young director, Kaarlo Bergbom did not have Josephson’s experience
when he began to build an opera company. The lyrical department
was a result of several coincidences, one being that the two Finnish, professionally
educated female singers, Emmy Achté and Ida Basilier, were
available. Emmy Achté’s sister Sofie Strömer was at that time engaged as
choral singer at the New Theatre and was also asked to join the Finnish
<strong>Opera</strong> Company. Bergbom as well as Josephson had to weigh his company’s
singing skills against its knowledge of the preferred national language, and
he had to make several compromises. The tenor was also a difficult issue
in Helsinki, even though the demand for a tenor who could command the
Finnish language was abandoned at an early stage. The tenor Ludvig Eriksson
was recruited from the chorus at the Royal Swedish Theatre, 20 but he
knew no Finnish at all. At its premiere (featuring Lucia di Lammermoor),
the first Finnish opera company consisted of the sisters Emmy and Sofie
Strömer and the baritone and orchestra conductor Lorenz Nikolai Achté
(1835–1900), Emmy’s future husband, together with the Swedish tenor
Ludvig Eriksson.
Bergbom also had plans to establish an opera orchestra with Nikolai
Achté as its conductor. But for the time being he had to assemble the orchestra
from available musicians in each town they visited and engage local
conductors. This was obviously a considerable inconvenience as the company
had to start from scratch every time with a different orchestra and a
different conductor . At this point the chorus consisted of the best singers
from the theatre department, which also caused some practical problems,
as the theatre and the opera company had to be in the same town at the
same time and take turns performing. 21
The Finnish Theatre Company and especially its opera company went
into a new phase when the group finally moved into the Arkadia Theatre
building, described as an old wooden barn, cold and with poor acoustics,
then in the outskirts of Helsinki. 22 (EAH 1907, pp. 182-185; Morgonbladet,
19 Kaarlo Bergbom’s sister Emilie Bergbom, who took care of many practical matters
at the theatre, often expressed her concerns about the opera in her letters to Betty
Elfving (the Finnish Literature Society, the Literature Archive; hereafter FLC/LA).
20 The contract book (F8A) at the Archives of the Royal Theatre ( hereafter KTA,
Kungliga teaterarkivet).
21 Correspondence between Nikolai Achté and Kaarlo Bergbom, 1873-1874 (FLC/LA).
22 It was situated close to where the Parliament building is today.