The most remarkable elements of Nordic music life are surely the most unlikely. Sweden’s fourth full-time opera house, though it sounds a little belittling to describe it as such, is in Umeå – an outpost in the wilderness of the country’s northern territories. You are reminded how remote this place is when arriving by plane from Stockholm, descending over a seemingly never-ending, quasi-Icelandic landscape of black (trees and peat) and white (snow and permafrost). It’s an appropriate landscape to surround a city known for its metal music scene.
At the last count, 133,091 souls called Umeå and its surroundings their home. Sweden has five full-season opera houses, one for every 2 million inhabitants – roughly half Germany’s tally of one per million. Each has a distinct profile with Norrlandsoperan in Umeå perhaps the most distinctive of all. Half of its home is a 1930s fire station. That was augmented in 2002 with a new structure resembling hybrid of contemporary art gallery and DIY store.
This architectural double-act curls around a modest semi-pedestrianized roundabout not far from the city’s spindly central bus station. For years, the building’s façade proclaimed the company’s provocative initial-based branding ‘NO!’ (the logo has since lost the exclamation mark and been toned down, the right arm of its ‘N’ beckoning north). Behind it are four auditoria (and yes, an art gallery) including a chic shoebox concert hall and a smart proscenium theatre with orchestra pit.
Arriving last Friday, 28 March, Umeå felt strangely non-Nordic. The heaped, compressed snow and permeating greyness reminded me of parts of Siberia while the deep, fast-flowing river that cuts through it – unusual in Scandinavia – lends the place the feeling of a town on the Volga (though the Ume was largely frozen over on my overnight visit). The city has its fair share of Swedish drabness; it is arranged on a solid grid and almost every bar seems to be a themed bar. But it’s punctuated with some proud civic architecture in red brick and a striking new creation in Väven – a white monolith by Snøhetta (Oslo Opera House) and White Arkitekter that would be the most prominent structure in the city even without its riverside location.
Väven opened in 2014, just in time for Umeå’s stint as European Capital of Culture. It contains the city’s central library and museum, a conference centre, an outpost of Sveriges Radio, a black-box theatre and two hotels – one of which I stayed in on my visit. It is impressive if mind-boggling; the word väven means ‘weave’ in Swedish, and you can easily find yourself losing the thread of your orientation inside. But there’s beauty in its not-quite-parallel lines and it sits well in context, sprawling both lengthways down to the river and up into the sky without ever, quite, seeming obtrusive.
Norrlandsoperan has always been on my radar but it was, until last week, the only full-time opera company in the Nordic region I hadn’t attended a performance at – the last piece in the jigsaw, you might say. From afar, I’d found the place intriguing – architecturally as well as operationally. I warmed to it as soon as I entered. The curved foyer has a sweep, but on a small scale – like the opera houses of Gothenburg or Amsterdam in miniature. Signage is discreet and smart. There is good use of space, particularly at the Box Office and the tall, open space that links the theatre to the black box studio in the old fire station. As always in Swedish theatres, the cloakroom is a nightmare.
I caught the end of the world premiere run of a new opera by Jenny Wilson, Älskarinnorna. It was based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek, first published in 1975 and thus sharing a fiftieth jubilee with Norrlandsoperan’s 2024/25 Season. I enjoyed the production more than the music, and you can read my reasoning here. World premieres are not uncommon here, but coming up in May is a production of La bohème that will tour the Norrland region. The season has also included a production of Rossini’s The Italian Girl in Algiers and a new opera on Virginia Woolf (when did one of Britain’s main-stage opera companies last present two new works in one season?). There are numerous quirky concert performances mounted by the company’s symphony orchestra under its Brazilian Music Director, Eduardo Strausser (his predecessors include Elim Chan, Roy Goodman, Rumon Gamba and Kristjan Järvi).
Sweden is operatically rich. In the week I saw Älskarinnorna there were productions of Salome and La bohème running at Malmö Opera; Peter Grimes and Madama Butterfly at The Gothenburg Opera; Figaro and La bohème at the Royal Swedish Opera and The Magic Flute at Stockholm’s Folkoperan. The two of those companies I regularly cover – in Gothenburg and Malmö – are in their best form for a decade. But I’d love to make it back to Umeå one day.