ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how two grand operas, Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots and Auber’s La Muette de Portici, served the escalating competition between the Finnish and the Swedish theatres for the hearts and minds of Helsinki audiences in 1877, and especially how Fenella, the mute, and Valentine, the convert, were construed as symbols of national identity. Symbolically, both Valentine and Fenella were turned into versions of the Finnish maiden, a standard national symbol that was being constructed during the 1870s: Valentine became an idealised fantasy of the obedient gentlewoman, sacrificing herself, and converting, for the sake of her Fatherland; Fenella came to represent the poor, yet brave Finnish fishergirl from the archipelago, a well-known figure at the Swedish Theatre, thanks to the poems of Johan Ludvig Runeberg.
