Revolutionary Opéra-Comique in Scandinavia: Transfer and Repertoire

Revolutionary Opéra-Comique in Scandinavia: Transfer and Repertoire

Scandinavia provides a particularly interesting case for the study of the impact of French revolutionary theatre. The Scandinavian countries (today’s Norway, Denmark and Sweden) were never invaded by the French during the Napoleonic wars that followed the Revolution of 1789, but these countries were nonetheless strongly affected by revolutionary ideas, in some cases experiencing profound constitutional upheavals. The project examines the impact of ideas from the French Revolution in Europe, by focusing on the intriguing case of the Scandinavian countries and by centring on the largely under-studied literary and musical phenomenon of opéra-comique. Opéra-comique, a very special and hugely popular form of musical drama mixing song and spoken dialogue, was one of the most popular forms of theatre and one of the most important means of expression of public opinion during the French Revolution. Yet this kind of theatre has received little attention in scholarship, be it from historians, musicologists, or literary scholars. The project builds on multidisciplinary approaches and recent work on opéra-comique during the French Revolution in order to examine the impact of the French revolutionary ideas through this repertoire in the case of the Scandinavian countries. The project includes the collection of historical performance evidence for opéra-comique in Sweden, Denmark and Norway for the period from 1789 to 1815. Through the establishment of an open online database, the project will make this information accessible for statistical analysis by scholars for the first time. On a conceptual level, the project will use the information gathered in the database to establish where, when, and how often revolutionary pieces were staged in Scandinavia. The project will also set out questions on the adaptation and modification of this repertoire in Scandinavian context. This will lead to new knowledge and pave the way for similar studies on a European level.