SWEDEN'S EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THEATRE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 8

SWEDEN'S EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THEATRE

By

ARTHUR

JACOBS

HEN the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Sweden in June, they stepped back one evening into the 18th century. .Accompanied by their Swedish Royal hosts, they attended a performance at the Drottningholm Court Theatre, which is unique in Europe. It still uses its original 18th century scenery and stage machines, Does the producer require, for instance, the rumble of distant thunder? Then a stage-hand takes a boulder the size of a football, and rolls it along the wooden planks of the floor. Some sea-waves? More stage-hands crank five specially carved and painted rollers at the back of the stage-and the effect, if not positively three-dimensional, is charming. A change of scenery? Four men below stage push a huge capstan around, and the old scenery is replaced by new in the astonishingly short time of ten seconds. Only by historical accident does all this survive today. The theatre was opened in 1766 to entertain the Swedish court when in residence at the neighbouring palace (a few miles from Stockholm). Queen Lovisa Ulrika and her son, the famous Gustaf III, were keenly and practically interested in drama and opera. Then, in 1792, a shot was fired which killed King Gustav. (it was this incident which inspired the. plot of Verdi’s opera, A Masked Ball.) The court’s interest in the theatre waned, and it was left derelict through the 19th century. ‘So it escaped the modernisation and technical "improvements" which other court theatres in Europe have undergone, And in 1922 it reopened to present 18th century operas and plays as their original audiences saw them. Once again it is the personal possession of the King of Sweden, and it ig in the King’s name that the director of the theatre, Dr. Gustaf Hillestrom, bids his audience welcome in a_ short speech Preceding the current summer performances. Not only does the stage recall the Past, but the auditorium too. Long nches, on which the audience sits, still bear the designations of their oris-

inal occupants — from the Captain of the King’s Guard to ‘the royal hairdressers. Soft elec-

tric lighting has replaced candle-light; but, as in candle-light days, the auditorium remains lit during performances. Personally, I think that this practice carries fidelity to history a bit too far; sometimes I have been More conscious of the people in the row in front than the people on the stage. But it is not only out of historical piety that visitors come to Drottningholm. True, it is a living museum; but it is also the home of charming and diverting stage performances. The opera artists are drawn from the company of the Royal Opera in Stockholm, which maintains a standard comparable with that of Covent Garden. At Drottningholm I noted especially the performances of Elisabeth Soderstrom, Sweden’s leading lyric soprano, who, only for personal reasons, declined an invitation to sing this year amid the international vocal galaxy at the Glyndebourne Opera in Fngland. The first opera I saw at Drottningholm this year was Mozart’s La Finta

Semplice, which may be translated as The Not-So-Simple Girl. Mozart wrote it when he was only twelve, so it would have been unwise to expect to find an undiscovered masterpiece of maturity. Indeed, this opera fell rather flat when it recently had its first London performance at the hands of a company from Salzburg. But the Drottningholm company; made up of Swedish and Danish artists, put on a much more stylish performance. So this juvenile work provided a happy evening in which the music really did seem

to. rise occasionally above the pleasant commonplaces of the mid18th century.

Later I saw the Italian 18th century comic opera, The Music Master-for-merly attributed to Pergolesi, but now known to be by an obscurer figure, Pietro Auletta. This was the opera put on for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, and deals with a simple intrigue between a music teacher, his pretty girl pupil, and an impressario who wishes to snatch her away into his opera company. But this opera, set in a domestic scene’ which ‘remains unchanged, did not use the fantastic scenic machinery which is the theatre’s pride. So, specially for the Royal visit, a new ballet was staged as well. The choreographer was Mary Skeaping-formerly ballet mistress of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, now ballet. director at the Stockholm Royal Opera. ; Watching a rehearsal, I saw Miss Skeaping march purposefully in her beret among the plumed helmets of her male dancers and the green gauzes of her nymovhs. She directed them in English-"They’re all keen to learn

English," she told me, "because that’s the only way they can travel professionally." The ballet, called Cupid Out of His Humour, was based on 17th century dance technique, Therefore, it had no "point work" for the girls‘luckily, I should say, for the 200-year-old planks of the Drottningholm Theatre have amassed a fair number of holes and cracks. The ballet made full use of the theatre’s resources, and at one point I saw the beefy Cupid descend in a dizzy diagonal in a carriage suspended from the flies. In the intervals of a performance, the audience can wander amid the lakeside gardens near by. Or, within the theatre itself, they can examine several rooms set aside as a historical theatre museum. There they can see rare old prints, cunningly contrived models, lovely and elaborate costumes. Foreigners easily outnumber the Swedes amorig the visitors, Dr. Hillestrom told me. Stockholm people seem sometimes apatheti¢ to this unique show-piece-though perhaps this is not really surprising, for in London, too, it. is the visitors and not the Londoners who flock to the Tower and St. Paul’s. Perhaps the Swedes will have their interest jogged by a new Swedish detective story which has just come out, in which the corpse is hidden away cunningly at Drottningholm amid the old stage machinery. The title, Look, Death is Waiting for You! is a quotation from a play by Bellmann, a Swedish classic dramatist and composer whose work I have also seen performed at Drottningholm. ’ Every year Stockholm holds a music festival in which the Drottningholm Theatre plays its part. (This is quite distinct from the festival of the International Society for Contemporary

Music, also recently held in Stockholm.) This year the festival artists include Sir Malcolm Sargent and the BBC Symphony Orchestra from London, and the Smetana String Quartet from Prague. In more than a mere musical sense, Swecen enjoys direct communication with both political "halves" of Europe. The visitor who has just flown in from London may walk into Stockholm Central Railway Station and see Polish State Railway carriages destined for East Berlin and Warsaw, via the Baltic Ferry. Sweden is> not yet a musical mecca. Tourists are more likely to be drawn by the wonderful design of household objects-which made me swear that, were I rich enough, I would travel to Stockholm to furnish my London house. But Sweden is, none the less, musically rich, In the villages, untrained fiddlers still play a strange and fascinating folk music for weddings. Stockholm itself boasts two symphony orchestras, several good choirs, the Royal Opera and the Drottningholm Theatre, and a_ broadcasting service that is musically very live indeed. Swedish composers today are active in writing vigorous, creative, fully modern music. Pass down Kungsgatan (King Street) in Stockholm, note the Underground railway still beirg constructed, afd pause by the huge statue of Orpheus, mae by Carl Milles. It is not by chance that the people of Stockholm have placed one of their most impressive monuments outside a public building that really means something to them-their concert-hall.