Geregeltes Vergnügen. Höfisches Theater in Schweden zur Zeit Nicodemus Tessins d.J. (1688-1706)

Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (1654-1728), known as court architect, diplomat and inventor of the Stockholm city palace, excelled in his work as a superintendent responsible for the buildings and gardens of King Charles XIIth from 1697 as a man of the theater and as a festival organizer. His intent was to constitute a court theater, in which he saw less its use as a control instrument of the absolute ruler over his subjects rather than simply its sheer existence. For the establishment of the institution "court theater" and also with their related standing court festivities, it was necessary to raise Charles XIIth awareness of a presentable culturally enwrought court life. Thus, Tessin announced Sweden's artistic production abroad, mainly in France, to gain recognition in the continental European theater practice. During his tenure Tessin arranged an organizational apparatus of craftsmen and artists, which was also temporarily used for the theater. He discovered and promoted his countryman and employee Göran Josuae Törnquist, who became an important figure within the establishment of the Swedish court theater. He was involved in the creative process of the court theater insofar that he supplied Tessin with etchings concerning theatre during a sponsored trip to Europe. A folder of drawings of stage settings by Filippo Juvarra, named Pensieri, which Törnquist was personally donated by the Italian artist in Rome 1705/06 can be seen as an outstanding preciosity. Törnsuist copied the drafts for superintendent Tessin in Stockholm. In these drawings Juvarra broke through the stage conventions of the 17th century and ignored even more his own development of stage prospects. He kept obviously to the French stage design, generated at the site of the so-called Palais à volonté. These properties led to the assumption, Juvarra had tailored the scenes on the terms of the Stockholm stage. The Stockholm theatre scenery came from Jean Bérains studio in Paris instead. These settings consisted of variable composable linked parts and background scenes, handmade by the stage artist Jean Saint-Hillaire d'Oliver. Like the stage settings Tessin imported a troup of actors from France. In August 1699, the Rosidor troup from Metz, which had a repertoire of 80 stage works of contemporary and popular French librettists, contracted with King Charles XII. Despite the great Nordic War and the great obstacles caused by the local audiences, they remained seven years in Sweden's capital. The troup played in two theatres at Stockholn, designed by Tessin: Tessin intigrated a hall-theatre on the second floor of the royal city residence, Kungshuset, with a wide stage, four audience levels, laterally placed benches, a royal box and galleries. The Kungshuset had a typical alleys stage based on the contemporary theaters of Paris. At the same time, another stage arose downtown. With the conversion of a great covered tenniscourt at Slottsbacken, Tessin built the first public playhouse with boxes, which corresponded to the needs of the social elites. The so-called Bollhuset was, similar to the Comédie-Française in Paris, conducted privately by the actors and faced with the risk of absent attendants. Tessin assessed also courtly festivals as a means of modern and cultured life at court and as a prestige and to impressively show off the splendor of the king. In the creation of ideas and finally also in their implementation, in the arrangement of divertissement for the Swedish royal family, his focus was clearly on the French court. He arranged for example, the feastive garden architecture of the park of Karlberg Palace with the iconographic theme "Four Seasons". This was an equally common motif in the artistic context presenting the octagonal pavilion, which had already been used several times in the Versailles Park festivals of king Louis XIV. With the reproduction of his feast reports in the Mercure galant Tessin desired to propagate the glamorous life of the Swedish court abroad. Courtly divertissements offered him during his career, repeatedly the chance to let his imagination run wild and to prove himself in the staging splendid arrangements in Sweden as a solid artist. Most of hist handwritten notes and letters from court festivals are solely devoted to the grotesque. The term grottesque, written with double t, was inflationary used by him in association with theater and court festival. But what did he exactly mean by calling a divertissement grottesque ? Did Tessin think of the ornament in costume or of costumes on the whole? In Jean I. Bérain’s innovative wall decorations opera and festival costumes similar to the costume figurines are to be found, which Tessin collected of his estimated french colleague. Within the wall panels they appear as a combination of grotesque and costume. Tessin’s idiosyncratic use of the term grottesque finally expresses conceptual transition from the decorative genre to a manner of disguise. Compared to other European courts Tessin established belatedly a court theater, which provided a permanent meeting place for the Swedish nobility with contemporary French theater. It offered the courtiers a communication area, which now allowed them to balance within the social hierarchy. Along the way, and finally in his position as superintendent Tessin can be understood as uomo universale, both as solely authorized with this issue and secondly as the only initiator of court theater with creative, intellectual potential. With consideration to the needs, the size and activities of all European art centers outlying Swedish court, Tessin instituted finally a short but intense festival and theater era in the far North.