The enchanting experience of Drottningholm opera house
Summers in England promise country-house operas. Glyndebourne opera house in Sussex was first built in 1934 and is still the grandest; Garsington emerged in 1989 in Oxfordshire but took on new life in Buckinghamshire in 2011 and Grange Park in Wiltshire joined the group in 1998. Generous and wealthy patrons, black ties and long dresses and champagne hampers on the lawns all feature – so long as the sun shines. Opera has always been at the elite end of the cultural spectrum. Its complex meld of music and theatre has always been expensive to produce. The forebears of today’s summer productions in England were the Court Theatres of 18th century Europe and among the most exquisite was at Drottningholm (literally, “Queen’s island”) in Sweden. It is the only truly authentic and fully functioning one still around.
The best way to arrive at Drottningholm is by ferry from Stockholm and the best time to do so is in the early weeks of summer. Winters in Sweden are long and Spring is short but summers are very special. Greenery breaks cover and is mirrored in the innumerable stretches of water and lakes. The ferry journey by one of two historic steamers lasts an hour and is a pleasure in itself. As it approaches the landing at Drottningholm the visitor enters a place of enchantment. It is not surprising that the Swedish royal family have their preferred residence here. Walking up the slope from the ferry the gardens and parkland – landscaped in the English style – the eye is drawn to the palace buildings set among them, including the Court Theatre.
Drottningholm is a product of dynastic machinations between Russia, Denmark and Prussia; Princess Louisa Ulrike of Prussia was married to Crown Prince Adolf Frederick of Sweden in 1744 and the palace of Drottningholm was provided as the couple’s new home. She was a formidable, interfering and frustrated royal absolutist constrained by a constitutional order she despised. However, she was also an intellectual interested in scientific developments and the arts. After becoming Queen in 1751, she created the Drottningholm Court Theatre which she officially opened in 1766. Almost every particular of the opera venue which Queen Louisa would have known herself, remains today.
After crossing through the small but inviting entrance, visitors can discover how the theatre actually works as a performance space. Walking downstairs under the auditorium an old world of mechanical beauties comes into view. An intricately engineered maze of moving parts sits in wait for a medley of workers to pull, push and heave. Then above their heads and largely out of sight, a world is made anew just as it had been in the middle of the 18th century. Giant cogs facilitate the movement of scenery. Climbing back up to the ground floor and then into the stalls to witness the opera itself, the walls are lined with flickering light bulbs shaped like candles. The stalls lead down to a proscenium archway and a deep stage beyond. The orchestra is bewigged and dressed accordingly.
As the performance begins the noise of wooden machinery being stirred into action by the assistants below is all too audible. Scenery is jerked into position and performers appear from the sides or on platforms hoisted up from below. A hand-operated machine hidden from view is available to imitate – very successfully – the sound of wind when required on stage. Nowadays visitors are, as it were, seated alongside Queen Louisa and her court and spared the conversational murmurings or babble that must have been the bane of attending an opera back in her day.
Queen Louisa favoured music she herself enjoyed for her new Court Theatre and she wasn’t willing to leave this to chance. She wanted composers to settle in Sweden and be in attendance to produce operas to her liking. One composer in particular stands out, Francesco Antonio Baldassare Uttini. He brought a troupe of musicians with him (including his opera singing wife) and as well as his own compositions, led performances of operas sent by the Queen’s relatives in Berlin and from elsewhere (including Carl Heinrich Graun’s influential Montezuma). Uttini was alert to shifts in musical fashion in his Italian homeland and elsewhere in Europe. Whilst his early operas were largely ‘opera seria’ with wonderfully exotic titles such as Adriano in Siria and L’eroe cinese, he would soon write comic operas and lyric tragedies and one instance at least of a ‘grand opera’ in Swedish (Thetis och Pelee), though not for Drottningholm.
The Court Theatre flourished all the while foreign performers could be retained in Sweden and its royal masters and mistresses supported it. Performances were held there each summer until 1771 when King Adolf Frederick died. Six years later the now Dowager Queen handed the theatre to her son, the new King Gustav III, who not only revived but much enjoyed the musical entertainments, even directing some himself. But in 1792 he was assassinated (an end which formed the basis of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera in 1859) and the Court Theatre fell silent once more for one hundred and thirty years. From 1921, there were again some summer performances, but only in 1979 did the Court Theatre return to full life. Every summer since operas have again taken place on its unique stage.
Drottningholm is more than its Court Theatre and worth a visit in any case, but to slip into a stall seat and experience an opera performance like no other since the 18th century is an experience not to be missed.