In the eclectic world of late 18th century Stockholm in the days of the court poet Carl Michael Bellman, musical life and expression was highly influenced by French and German styles. This world will again be brought to life by four male singers, the actress Marika Lagercrantz and two eminent Swedish folk musicians on the nyckelharpa on the very stage where Bellman once stood and performed his immortal songs.

The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected
Robert Frost

As the summer day meets the cool of the evening, we invite the audience to a concert performance inspired by the evening encounters, both human, divine and musical. Music by John Dowland, Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Purcell, Claudio Monteverdi and others creates the acoustic landscape. The auditorium, foyers and their inhabitants, the singers and musicians as well as the audience, make up the visual space. As an audience member you are welcome to move freely around the room to experience the sounds and movements from different perspectives or find a place in the centre of the room and let yourself be surrounded by music from all directions.

This choreographed performance mixes sacred and profane music in a staged concert that celebrates the intimate space that the darkening sky creates around us.

In the great hallway of the palace, the nyckelharpa and the recorder strike up a baroque folk musical groove. In the orangery, the deep voice of the cello fills the space between the 18th century sculptures, and in the chapel, two soprano voices blend with the sound of the lute on their way to the ceiling. All this in a concert where two short walks connect three musical spaces in the palace park.

Note: The concert starts at three different places simultaneously. Your starting place is stated on your ticket.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.

Albert Einstein

Meet the future stars of opera as we proudly launch a new edition of the Confidencen Opera & Music Festival Academy! With generous support from the Anders Wall Foundation, four young singers will deepen their knowledge of the baroque style together with internationally renowned coaches in the field and with musicians from the Confidencen Opera & Music Festival Orchestra. In the summer of 2022, the academy will revolve around profane Italian music from carnival and theatre as well as sacred music from northern Germany. These repertoires are brought together in a staged concert called Sacred and Profane, inspired by Einstein’s idea of the divine being present in the mysteries of the physical world.

The academy is made possible through generous support from the Anders Wall foundation.

The Turkish Pavilion was the first building to be initiated by King Gustav III in the Haga Park and was erected during the years 1786-1788. Here, court poet Carl Michael Bellman performed one of his own plays before the King, and here dinner parties were held as well as political deliberations.

This concert lets the history of 18th century Sweden, when the country was transformed from a military power to a society characterized by science, art and music, sound through two of Sweden’s leading nyckelharpists, Torbjörn Näsbom and Erik Rydvall.

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
The times change and we change with them

We end the festival 2022 with a celebratory concert where the composer of this year’s opera, Joseph Martin Kraus, will be featured alongside his contemporaries, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. From letters and other sources we know that Kraus and Haydn met on several occasions and that Kraus and Mozart lived for a while on the same street in Vienna. Also, Kraus was most likely the first person to conduct a symphony by Mozart in Stockholm. Now, the music of these three masters will sound together in the incredible acoustics of the Confidencen auditorium, resounding from the past to the present.

Programme

Joseph Haydn (1733–1809) Symphony nr 64 ”Tempora mutantur”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Aria ”Bella mia fiamma” KV 528
Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792) Symfoni in c-minor, VB 142

After 240 years, it is a great joy to finally bring back to Confidencen the operatic masterpiece Proserpin by Joseph Martin Kraus, which premiered here in 1781 before King Gustav III, the Theatre King. The story revolves around the young goddess Proserpin, daughter of Jupiter and Ceres, and a web of intrigue, unrequited love and natural disaster that is spun around her.

The opera was a great success at the royal court when it was first performed, and the beauty and power of its music move listeners still today. The piece is full of storming passion, heartfelt despair and burning love, all set to music reminiscent of Mozart, Gluck and Haydn, the European styles that Kraus brought to his new homeland Sweden. At the same time, the music is truly original to Kraus and his mission to create something unique and fantastical in an unstable time in history.