Grand opera in nineteenth-century Stockholm

During the nineteenth century the Royal Opera in Stockholm increasingly became an institution catering directly to the bourgeois market while connections to the royal court weakened. This chapter investigates this process and how it came about. It shows that grand operas by Auber and Meyerbeer played an important role in this change, from the first performances in the 1830s until the end of the century. These operas were performed by the greatest and most popular singers of the time, such as Jenny Lind, and were attractive to a large audience, while they at the same time connected to a long tradition of staging through-composed operas in Stockholm.