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

Staging a national language
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surprising that at this same time, the Finnish <strong>Opera</strong> Company staged Meyerbeer’s
Les huguénots and Halevy’s La Juive, in both of which a religious
conflict divides the people.
During the following season, 1877-1878, the number of premieres had
decreased alarmingly at both Helsinki theatres , with only four at the Finnish
<strong>Opera</strong> Company and three at the New Theatre. The meetings of the
Diet were over, the discussions about the merger were stranded, and the
Finnish Theatre Company’s offer to rent the New Theatre for the next five
years had been turned down. However, this was not the immediate reason
behind the decline in the premieres for the upcoming season, at least not
at the New Theatre. Rather it was because the company had been reduced;
Engdahl and Lange had left and were never entirely replaced. Nevertheless,
Alessandro Stradella was staged, Saloman’s debut role from earlier days.
The grand operas Guglielmo Tell, La Muette and Rigoletto were repeated
but without Engdahl and Lange. Parts from Guglielmo Tell were also given
with Conrad Behrens as guest performer in Tell’s role. Behrens had recently
been on tour in Christiania in the autumn of 1877 together with Zelia
Trebelli, and they both visited Helsinki in the autumn and gave concerts.
The end of the episodes
After only one and a half seasons of intense operatic production the actors
at the New Theatre staged a “palace revolution” (Degerholm 1903, p. 14),
which resulted in Director Grefberg leaving his position. The Board once
again was re-organised, and the engineer John Stenberg took over the position
as administrative director of the opera (Degerholm’s archive, SLC).
For some time the actors had been dissatisfied with developments at the
theatre. The members of the Board who had resigned together with Kiseleff
expressed their opinions in the press against the opera business at the
theatre, among them the writer and critic Rafael Hertzberg, who hoped that
the opera’s “destructive sway” (fördärvliga välde) was well and truly over
(Finsk Tidskrift, 1 January 1878).
From the theatre’s financial accounts (Degerholm’s archive, SLC), it can
be concluded that the theatre suffered a huge deficit from the disastrous
season of 1877–1878 by not having regular opera performances. In addition
the state funding was withdrawn, at least for a while, in order to speed up
the decision about the proposed merger. It now became obvious that the
Helsinki bourgeoisie really cared about its theatre. Board member Wahlberg
was married to a daughter of Nikolai Sinebrychoff, the Russian mer-