Elfrida Andrée sheds feminine light on fierce Viking in Fritjof Saga. That a woman composed an opera was sensational enough in a genre traditionally dominated by men, but that she also questioned celebrated ‘masculine’ values such as physical strength, courage and belligerence was unforgivable.

https://theaderks.wordpress.com/2026/01/25/elfrida-andree-sheds-feminine-light-on-fierce-viking-in-fritjof-saga/ #MissyMazzoli, #LouiseBertin, #ElfridaAndrée, #SelmaLagerlöf, #FritjofSaga, #AaltoTheater

Elfrida Andrée sheds feminine light on fierce Viking in Fritjof Saga

In 1894, composer Elfrida Andrée and librettist Selma Lagerlöf competed in an opera competition for the opening of the new building for the Royal Opera in Stockholm. Their Fritjof Saga was not selected and remained unperformed. Almost a century and a half later, the Aalto Theatre in Essen is staging the world premiere of this one act opera inspired by a Viking saga.

The Essen opera house is not really in the international limelight, but regularly sticks its neck out with adventurous productions. Two years ago it presented a compelling staging of the then newly rediscovered opera Fausto by Louise Bertin from 1831; last year saw the German premiere of The Listeners by Missy Mazzoli.

Alongside rarely performed operas such as Paul Hindemith’s Cardillac and Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, this season features the one-act opera Fritjof Saga by Elfrida Andrée (1841-1929). This world premiere at the Aalto Theatre, which was built in 1988 by and named after Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, makes a trip to Essen more than worthwhile.

First female organist and telegraphist in Sweden

Elfrida Andrée was born in Visby into a politically liberal family, and was a pioneer in many ways. At the age of fourteen, she moved to Stockholm to train as an organist at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. She had to take private lessons because women were not admitted to the programme. In 1857, she became the first woman in Sweden to obtain a diploma as an organist. Together with her father, she lobbied for a change in the law that would give women the right to be appointed as organists.

They were successful: in 1861, Andrée became organist at the Finnish Church in Stockholm and in 1856 she moved to Gothenburg Cathedral, where she remained until her death. In 1863, she also helped bring about a change in the law that allowed women to work as telegraph operators. She herself became the first and set a trend: twenty years later, Sweden had more female than male telegraph operators.

While her older sister Frederika (1836-1880) had a beautiful singing voice and became a celebrated prima donna at the Royal Opera, Elfrida developed a broader musical range. She studied composition with Ludvig Norman and Niels Gade and wrote a piano quintet at the age of twenty-four. She submitted it anonymously to the Swedish Society for Art Music, which accepted and published it in 1865. It caused a stir when the ‘man’ behind this composition turned out to be a woman.

Symphonic music

Four years later, her First Symphony was performed in Stockholm, where it received a lukewarm reception. In a letter, Andrée complained that the musicians had deliberately played poorly, sceptical as they were about a symphonic work by a woman. Her family advised her to concentrate on chamber music from then on, but she was not deterred. She would eventually compose three symphonies, two organ concertos (still performed today), an opera, choral works and many chamber music pieces. Her oeuvre comprises over a hundred works.

In 1871, two years after the premiere of her First Symphony, she conducted an orchestra in Gothenburg, again as the first woman in Sweden ever. Around this time, she also formulated her motto: ‘the elevation of women’, freely after the book The Subjection of Women by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill. The fact that she was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Music eight years later – again as the first woman – shows how firmly she had established herself in the Swedish music world. In 1897, she was also the first female conductor to be put in charge of the popular concerts of the Gothenburg Workers’ Institute.

Fritjof Saga

When a composition competition was announced in 1894 for the opening of the new building of the Royal Opera House, Andrée decided to take a chance. She asked fellow feminist Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) to write a libretto, and they eagerly set to work. They chose the Icelandic saga Fritjof as their subject, about the love between the Viking Fritjof and the Norwegian king’s daughter Ingeborg. The story originated around 1300 and is set in eighth-century Norway. It was popular throughout Scandinavia, and in 1825 the Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér published a Swedish translation.

The heroic epic also gained a foothold in the rest of Europe. None other than Goethe praised the ‘ancient, powerful, gigantic-barbaric poetry’ and asked Amalie von Imhoff to translate it into German. Several composers were inspired by the saga. The first was Max Bruch, who published his cantata Frithjof in 1864; ten years later, his compatriot Heinrich Hofmann composed the Frithjof Symphony. Another decade later, the symphonic poem Fritjof’s Meeresfahrt by Johan Wagenaar followed. Also two operas were dedicated to him: Frithiof by the Frenchman Théodore Dubois (1892) and Fritjof by the Dutchman Cornelis Dopper (1895).

Strong bearded men on adventurous voyages

Traditionally, the myths and legends about Vikings were characterised by ‘strong, bearded men who embarked on adventurous voyages’, as we read in the Aalto Theatre programme. This certainly applies to Fritjof, who was deeply admired by the German Emperor Wilhelm II: in 1890, he named a coastal defence ship after him and in 1913, he presented the Norwegians with an imposing statue, which towers menacingly over the Sognefjord at a height of 22 metres.

The self-assured Andrée and Lagerlöf had no intention of going along with this glorification of warlike alpha males. After all, both had been ardent advocates of women’s rights, or, as Lagerlöf called it, ‘female ethnicity’, throughout their lives. Their libretto for Fritjof Saga focuses on the women who suffer from the eternal warfare. The ‘Norse heroes’ are critically questioned and get counterplay by two powerful women to boot.

Lagerlöf often drew on Scandinavian sagas and legends in her novels. She was therefore familiar with the story of Fritjof, but gave it her own twist. In addition to the Norwegian king’s daughter Ingeborg, she invented the Finnish king’s daughter and sorceress Guatemi. She is like a ‘little sister’ to Ingeborg, who not only acts as a fellow sufferer, but also as a rebellious counterpart.

‘Female’ values prevail

As in many operas, two men compete for the love of one woman. Ingeborg and Fritjof love each other, but her brother, King Helge, disapproves of a union between the princess and the Viking and sends him on a long journey. When King Ring defeats Helge in battle, he is only willing to make peace on condition that he receives Ingeborg’s hand in marriage.

She agrees to this in order to protect her country and her people. Helge’s wife Guatemi tells Ring that Ingeborg still loves Fritjof, but he marries her nevertheless. When Fritjof returns and does not find Ingeborg, the situation between him and Helge escalates, resulting in great destruction.

Some time later Ingeborg visits her now devastated homeland. Fritjof awaits her and wants to flee together, but to his dismay, she chooses for Ring. Filled with vengeance, he returns to the sea for more raids. Guatemi tries to sink his ship with her magic powers, but Ingeborg prays for him and the storm subsides. During his raids, Fritjof gradually realises that he is not really cut out to sow death and destruction.

In the fourth and final act, Ring, Ingeborg, Fritjof and Guatemi meet at the court of Ring and Ingeborg. Guatemi incites Fritjof to take revenge, but he refuses. Ingeborg overhears their conversation and her love for Fritjof is rekindled; King Ring senses this. He is dying and entrusts Ingeborg to Fritjof, so that they may rule his empire together. Thus, the opera concludes with a happy ending: the softer ‘feminine’ values of self-sacrifice, self-awareness and compassion have prevailed.

Andrée and Lagerlöf challenge male values

Andrée and Lagerlöf’s creation of their Fritjof Saga was revolutionary in several respects. That a woman composed an opera was sensational enough in a genre traditionally dominated by men, but that she also questioned celebrated ‘masculine’ values such as physical strength, courage and belligerence was unforgivable. It was a matter of course that the one-act opera would not be chosen to open the new opera house.

This was inaugurated on 19 September 1898 with a cantata by Ivar Hallström, the opera Frondörerna by Adolf Fredrik Lindblad and scenes from the opera Estrella de Soria by Franz Berwald. Later that year, there was a concert performance of Fritjof Saga by amateur musicians from the Gothenburg Workers’ Institute, but it got a lukewarm reception; a staged version has not yet been produced. On Women’s Day, 8 March 2019, the Gothenburg Opera Choir and Orchestra did present a concert performance, with Swedish tenor Markus Pettersson as Fritjof and Swedish soprano Julia Sporsén as Ingeborg.

Aalto Theatre stages belated world premiere

In 1909, Andrée compiled a five-part suite from her opera, which has been recorded on CD several times. These recordings show that she was very familiar with the opera tradition and was able to express both stormy clashes of war and sensual love scenes with great flair. Grand, martial orchestral passages are beautifully counterbalanced by lyrical solos from individual instruments and restrained strings, testifying to underlying tensions.

127 years after its inception, the Aalto Theatre is finally presenting a staged version, in a German translation specially created for this purpose. The website tells us that the production will immerse us ‘in the fairy-tale, fantastical world of popular film sagas, while at the same time a frame story establishes the link with the modern world’. I am curious to see how this will work out in practice. So off to Essen, barely two and a half hours’ drive from Amsterdam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg02LxZokM0

Elfrida Andrée: Fritjof-Saga
Aalto Theater Essen, 7 February 2026
Essen Philhormonic / Wolfram-Maria Märtig
The opera runs through 9 April

#AaltoTheater #ElfridaAndrée #FritjofSaga #LouiseBertin #MissyMazzoli #SelmaLagerlöf

Missy Mazzoli’s opera Song from the Uproar on New Amsterdam

In 1904 the Swiss adventurer Isabelle Eberhardt (born 1877) drowned in a flash flood in the Sahara, only 27 years old. For four years she’d traversed the desert on horseback, dressed as a man, smoking, drinking, and even gaining access to a Sufi brotherhood. She documented her travels in journals and short stories, and her last writings had to be pulled from the water and dried.

Eberhardt inspired many artists, such as Missy Mazzoli, whose opera Song from the Uproar was premiered at the Kitchen New York in February 2012, and released on cd eight months later by New Amsterdam.

Mazzoli studied with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, and
The New York Times deems her “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York”.  Sequenza21.com calls her “one of the new wave of scarily smart young composers,” and Time Out New York pinpoints her as “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart.”

Missy Mazzoli – Photo Stephen Taylor

At 32 Missy Mazzoli is highly successful, not only receiving public and critical acclaim, but being commissioned by leading ensembles and institutions. Among them Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Currently she is composer in residence with Opera Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre Group. Interesting credits for a composer who vowed never to write opera.

In an interview with Sascha Verner of Swiss National Radio and Television (SRF), Mazzoli said: “Opera is too complicated, too comprehensive, and you’re dependent on many others.” Her attitude changed abruptly when, thanks to a radio feature she got to know the diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt: “I knew immediately that I wanted to tell her story in some sort of musical expression, and that this had to be larger than a song cycle or an abstract piece for orchestra. The audience should be able to enter Isabelle’s world, a world that addresses several senses, and opera is best suited for this.”

Mazzoli wrote the first notes of Song from the Uproar, the lives and deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt when she was 27, coincidentally the same age at which her hero died. She wrote the libretto together with Royce Vavrek, delving abundantly in Eberhardt’s relentless and detailed chronicles of her life.

In 1901 this adventurous and fearless woman married the Algerian soldier Slimene Emme, but their relationship was riddled with conflict and ended in his deserting her some three years later. Mazzoli was struck by “the universality of Isabelle Eberhardt’s life story, her struggle for independence, her passions, all the contradictions that still determine the lives of many women today.”

The composer zooms in on her despair and loneliness, her notion of being an outsider, and her fascination for death. She distilled this into a 75 minute opera for mezzo soprano, four singers, and small ensemble. Mazzoli’s admiration for Eberhardt is evident from her sweeping, pop-like melodies, interpreted with dramatic gusto by Abigail Fischer.

Her solo part is embedded in repetitive, pulsating patterns from (bass)clarinet, double bass, electric guitar and flute/piccolo (Now Ensemble), barbershop like counterpoint from a five-piece choir, and electronic sound effects (though these aren’t mentioned in the cd-booklet).

The music is fresh and appealing, with hints of pop, modern classical, close harmony, minimalism, and electronic music. Mazzoli once said she feels a strong affinity with Schumann, though she grew up with the music of David Bowie, and this perhaps explains the accessibility and tonal focus of her music.

When Sasha Verner asked her about style, Mazzoli answered: “That is a very tough question, which I’ve given a lot of thought. You can’t call my music indie-rock, but it is definitely independent classical music, so perhaps indie-classical would be the best option.” She’s right, in Song from the Uproar Mazzoli presents a shimmering, fascinating sound world that defies any regular label and speaks to public and critics alike.

Missy Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar was released on New Amsterdam Records, November 2012.

This review first appeared on I Care if You Listen

#ICareIfYouListen #IsabelleEberhardt #MissyMazzoli #SongFromTheUproar