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Project: Bigger
Jarl och Mechtild : A
Metamorphosis for the Swedish Stage of a French Comédie-ballet
Laureate: Philippe Rolland
On February 23rd, 1745, La Princesse de
Navarre, comédie-ballet by Voltaire and Rameau, is created in
Versailles for the wedding of the Dauphin with Marie-Thérèse d’Espagne.
In July 1774, Birger Jarl och Mechtild, Swedish adaptation of La
Princesse de Navarre, is performed in Stockholm Palace, again in
the setting of a royal wedding, the one of Gustave III’s
brother, Charles, and of the duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta.
Almost thirty years separate the French
play from its Swedish adaptation. Taken separately, each of
these two occasional plays seem of rather small interest. But we
wish to analyse comparatively these two plays according to the
following pattern: in relation to what we know about La
Princesse de Navarre, what becomes this French work adapted for
a foreign stage, in this case the Swedish stage?
The interest of a comparative study is
double: at the same time aesthetic and political.
Aesthetic, since this study will lead
to replace La Princesse de Navarre in the theatrical work of
Voltaire and to investigate about the importance of the genre of
the French Comédie-ballet at this time: how does it mingle the
theatrical genres – comedy, tragedy? How does the subject, the
customs, the typology of characters chosen by the playwright
relay to the context of performances? How do dance and music
intervene in the play? What was the scenery? More generally, how
do these various Parties intégrantes develop in the writing of
the drama?
Using the same reading grid of the
Parties intégrantes, the study will focus on the process of
adaptation of a French work and on its metamorphosis into a
« national » play on Swedish stages. If
documentation on La Princesse de Navarre is more easily
available in Paris, it seems necessary to go to Sweden in order
to enrich research on Birger Jarl och Mechtild. Studying the
libretto – printed in 1774 – should show how the
librettist, Gyllenborg, adapted Voltaire’s text: in which
historic context did he transpose the plot? Did he remove or add
scenes and characters? Where in his text did he make appear the
dance and music? In summary: how does a Swedish playwright look
at a French play?
This survey based on objective criteria
of comparison should question, in a second step, the influence,
primordial and disguised, of the French stage in the Gustavian
theatre, one of the most active European theatres of its time.
Political interest also then: since the
two works went up on the occasion of a royal wedding, the
Swedish work differs from its French original by its open
intention: raising inspiration by evocating the history of the
nation. The representation of Birger Jarl och Mechtild is even
more political in the sense that Gustave III, at this time,
wanted to create a real national Swedish theatre. Birger Jarl,
hero of the play, is precisely a national hero, like is Gustaf
Wasa, to whom an opera would also be later dedicated. Bringing
the history of the nation into the artistic life shows
propaganda concerns, that Voltaire, in the monarchic context of
1745, could not endeavour. This difference between the two plays,
which have a very different relationship to the monarchy who
ordered them, has to be carefully defined; only when this
political aspect will be clearly isolated, can the purely
aesthetic part of the European influence, appear.
Philippe
Rolland
Mai 2003
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