Staging a national language
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surprising that at this same time, the Finnish Opera 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 Opera 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 Guillaume Tell, La Muette and Rigoletto were repeated but without Engdahl and Lange. Parts from Guillaume 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, SLS). 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, SLS), 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 In addition the state funding was withdrawn, at least for a while, in order to speed up the decision about the proposed merger.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-