Royal Swedish Opera - History

The art of opera first made its appearance in Sweden at the beginning of the 18th century. The first performances were given by visiting theatre companies from abroad, and not until the early 1770s did any truly Swedish opera emerge. In 1771 King Gustaf III dismissed the French opera group that had for some decades been performing at the Bollhuset on the hill by the Royal Castle in Stockholm and founded a Swedish opera company instead. All opera was to be sung in Swedish. By "importing" Italian and German composers like Francesco Uttini, Joseph Martin Kraus, Johann Gottlieb Naumann and Abbé Vogler and getting them to compose operas to texts by Swedish poets, the King laid the foundations for a Swedish opera art. Gustavian opera stands out as a concept all of its own in the musical history of Sweden. During Gustaf's reign many great works were written, such as Naumann's Gustaf Wasa to a libretto by Johan Henrik Kellgren (following a concept by Gustaf III himself) and Kraus's Aeneas in Carthage, also to a text by Kellgren.

January 18, 1773 has come to be regarded as the date on which Swedish opera was born. That day a performance was given of the opera Thetis and Pelée, composed by Francesco Uttini to words by Alderman Johan Wellander. Until 1782 all opera in Stockholm was performed at the Bollhuset, which also put on other European works of varying merit, though always translated into Swedish. Gluck, Grétry and Henrik Philip Johnsen (a naturalised Swede) were the most popular composers.

In the very year when the activities of his opera began at the Bollhuset, the King started planning an opera house. Construction began in 1775 and the Royal Opera House was officially opened on September 30, 1782. The inauguration was to have been celebrated with a performance of Kraus's Aeneas, but the female lead, Dido, had fled the country with her husband to escape his creditors. Instead Naumann’s Cora and Alonzo, based on a text by G.J.Adlerbeth took its place. A standing ovation awaited both the opera and the opera house, which had been designed by C.F.Adelcrantz and was for the next century regarded as one of the most beautiful buildings in Stockholm. Its reputation spread far and wide and it was claimed to be one of the most perfect theatres in the world. Barely ten years after the opening of the opera Gustaf III was assassinated at a masked ball in March 1792. His murder caused repercussions throughout the civilized world and the event was operatically immortalised in Gustaf III or Le bal masque by Francois Auber and above all by Giuseppe Verdi in his A Masked Ball. Not until January of the following year did the Opera get going again. The only operas still known to us today that were performed there in new productions until the turn of the century are Paisiello's The Barber of Seville and, to some extent, Grétry's Richard Coeur de Lion and Le Caravan du Caire. Kraus's Aeneas in Carthage was finally premièred in November 1799, and parts of that opera have also survived and been performed in modern times.

The Bollhuset had already seen performances of ballet, and the art of dance received the attention it deserved at the Royal Opera too. The first ballet to be staged there was Louis Gallodier's Opportunity makes the Thief, which was recently revived by the Royal Ballet after nearly 200 years.

1812 saw the first performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Royal Opera, followed soon after by Don Giovanni, and The Abduction from the Seraglio. The Marriage of Figaro had its Swedish première in January 1821 and Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz heralded the romantic era in April 1823. Then came "the great operas" in quick succession: Mozart's Titus and Cosi fan tutte, Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Il Turco in Italia, Beethoven's Fidelio, Donizetti`s Lucia di Lammermoor and Bellini's Norma and La Sonnambula. These are but a few of the operas familiar to us today that were already in the repertoire before 1850. There were also a number of Swedish operas and song-plays that have since fallen into oblivion. The operas The Queen of Golconda and Estrella di Soria by Franz Berwald, which belong to the period have however been revived in modern times and his Jag går i kloster (I enter the Monastery) and Modehandlerskan (The Modiste) also get a mention in the footnotes to the musical history of Sweden and so does Lindblad's contemporaneous opera Frondörerna. Andreas Randel's opera or song-play Värmlänningarna (The People of Värmland), which was first performed in March 1846, became one of the Royal Opera's greatest successes of all time. By 1997 this comedy, so popular with Swedish audiences, had seen no less than 842 performances at the Opera.

An average of three new ballet productions were staged every year at the new opera house, and by September 1845 it was the turn of Giselle, one of the great classical ballets, and this was followed by another future classic, Coppelia in 1896. Apart from these and a few ballets by Auguste Bournonville, most of the other ballets performed in the 19th century have not survived the axe of time and are now forgotten. The three great Tchaikovsky ballets, although written during the 19th century, did not reach the stage of the Royal Opera until 1929 (The Nutcracker) and 1942 (The Sleeping Beauty and a one act version of Swan Lake). A complete performance of the four act Swan Lake had to wait until 1953, but since then that ballet has been the most often performed of all with more than 500 performances.

The first Verdi opera to be performed at the Royal Theatre (the opera house was to change its name as many as twelve times at regular intervals) was Macbeth in August 1852. To be more precise it was the first complete Verdi opera to be performed by the Opera, as in 1848 a visiting company had given a performance of Ernani and the Opera itself gave several performances of Act III alone of that same opera in 1851.

Wagnerian opera, in the shape of Rienzi, came to Stockholm in June 1863 and the first of Wagner's famous ten, The Flying Dutchman, had its première in 1872. Bizet's Carmen entered the stage on March 22, 1878, only three years after its first performance in Paris. To date Carmen has been performed 1.390 times at the Stockholm Opera - a unique record unchallenged by any other opera or ballet.

Verdi's Otello in May 1890 and Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana in December of that year were to be the last opera premières at the Gustavian opera house. For some time the opera house had been considered technically dated and besides the foundations of the building were slowly moving towards the nearby stream of Stockholm. A farewell performance was given on November 30, 1891. In 1892 the building was completely demolished and the foundations for a new opera house were laid.

For visitors to present day Stockholm it is worth pointing out that the building still standing right across the square from the present opera house, and which today is Sweden's Foreign Office, has an exterior exactly similar to Gustaf III's opera house.
For seven years the Opera resided at the Svenska Teatern at Blasieholmen, giving first performances of such perennial favourites as Smetana's The Bartered Bride, Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, Wagner's Die Walküre and Verdi's Falstaff. The last performance by the Royal Opera at Svenska Teatern was given on June 3, 1898.
In the early autumn of that year the new opera house, designed by the architect Axel Anderberg in a neo-classical style and built on the same site as the old one, stood ready. On September 19 it opened with, as an hommage to the past and the old house, a performance of Adolf Fredrik Lindblad's Frondörerna, scenes from Berwald's Estrella di Soria and finally a newly composed inaugural cantata by Ivar Hallström. What could be more Swedish! The 1898/99 season continued in the Swedish vein, the only first nights being Wilhelm Stenhammar's Tirfing and Andreas Hallén's Valdemarsskatten.

In 1901 Stockholm's opera-goers were first introduced to Puccini - La Bohème on November 29 and a good two years later, in February 1904, Tosca received its Swedish première. The staging of Götterdämmerung in February 1907 completed the first round at the Opera of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelungs. 1908 brought the first Richard Strauss opera, Salome. Since then the Royal Swedish Opera has added to its repertoire most of the leading works in the international operatic and ballet literature from the baroque to our own times. In the course of the present century numerous works by Swedish composers have also taken the stage, from Wilhelm Peterson-Berger's Arnljot, premièred in 1910 to Ingvar Lidholm's A Dream Play, hailed as a masterpiece of Swedish opera, which got an enthusiastic reception at its first night on September 12th 1992. In 1998 the Royal Opera House celebrated its first centenary with another Swedish first, the opera The City (Staden) by composer Sven David Sandström and poet Katarina Frostenson to much national and international acclaim.

The Royal Swedish Opera has over the years sent many a great opera singer out into the world. Jenny Lind, Christina Nilsson, Jussi Björling, Birgit Nilsson, Sigurd Björling, Gösta Winbergh, Elisabeth Söderström, Nicolai Gedda, Ingvar Wixell and Berit Lindholm are but a few of the legendary Swedish singers who once made their debut at the Royal Opera. And the tradition continues with singers like Håkan Hagegård, MariAnne Häggander, Laila Andersson Palme, Britt Marie Aruhn, Birgitta Svendén, Anita Soldh, Siv Wennberg, Stefan Dahlberg, Katarina Dalayman, Thomas Sunnegårdh, Malena Ernman and many more besides.

The Royal Swedish Ballet, resident Ballet Company of the Royal Swedish Opera, under its present director Madeleine Onne, is nowadays regarded as one of Europe's leading ballet companies. It has also fostered its legends like Jean Börlin, Carina Ari, Elsa Marianne von Rosen, Mariane Orlando, Björn Holmgren, Ellen Rasch, and Anneli Alhanko. For some young dancers, such as Johan Renvall of the American Ballet Theatre, the Royal Ballet acted as a springboard to world fame. Tours to many foreign countries, like China, USA, Northern Ireland, Spain, Italy, Japan and, last year, USA have greatly enhanced the company's reputation as a leading exponent of classical as well as modern ballet. Among the stars in the company of today can be found principal Dancers like Jurgita Dronina, Marie Lindqvist, Anna Valev, Brendan Collins, Anders Nordström and Jan-Erik Wikström.

The Royal Opera started touring with its opera productions in the 1920s, first around Sweden and later in other parts of Scandinavia and the North and since 1959 further afield to places like Edinburgh, London, Montreal, Munich, Kiel, Wiesbaden, Moscow, Seville, Dresden, and Berlin. Today the Royal Opera employs some 600 people on a permanent basis. Its orchestra, The Royal Opera Orchestra, counts 112 members and is Scandinavia's largest orchestra as well as one of the oldest in the world, having originated as King Gustaf Wasa's Court Chapel in the 16th century. The Royal Opera Chorus numbers 60 members and the Royal Ballet 73 dancers. There are some 40 permanently employed solo singers and numerous guest singers every season. The Opera's season runs between late August and late June, and during this time some 350 opera performances, ballet performances and concerts are given, primarily on the main stage in the opera house, but also on the Rotundan stage within the premises, at the ancient Drottningholm Court Theatre, at the similarly ancient Confidencen, Royal Court Theatre of Ulriksdal, and at Södra Teatern in the southern part of central Stockholm and also, occasionally, at other venues.

From April 1st 2004 Anders Franzén is the General Director of the Royal Swedish Opera. Franzén is well known in Swedish music life after having been director of the Orchestras in Malmö and Norrköping and lately The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.