Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble

The Drottningholm Court Baroque Ensemble originated in 1971 when Lars Brolin assembled musicians drawn from the Stockholm Royal Opera Orchestra. Its designation derives from the Drottningholm Slottstheater, which King Gustaf III erected in 1766 on the island of Mälaren facing Stockholm. Intended chiefly for operatic productions, the venue later formed part of the Royal Palace complex that Gustaf III also commissioned and that reached completion only in 1782. During a masked ball held there in 1792, assassins struck down Gustaf III—an incident Giuseppe Verdi later dramatized in Un ballo in maschera. Although his successor contemplated demolishing the Slottstheater, the structure was instead sealed, thereby preserving its original stage machinery, draperies, and interiors unaltered for a century and a half. Performances resumed in the early 1920s, and the theater’s distinctive eighteenth-century atmosphere served as the backdrop for Ingmar Bergman’s 1976 cinematic adaptation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Discovery of this time-capsule theater naturally called for a matching ensemble devoted to period instruments, yet five decades elapsed before musical scholarship could meet that requirement. Even after its establishment, the group waited another fifteen years before undertaking its first recording. That debut, a 1986 account of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons directed by Nils-Erik Sparf and issued on the Swedish BIS label, earned widespread praise from critics and audiences alike. Over the subsequent twenty years the ensemble’s expertise supported approximately two dozen releases on BIS, Naxos, Musica Sveciae, and Proprius. In the opening years of the twentieth century, reduced Swedish state subsidies amid economic constraints compelled the Drottningholm Slottstheater to curtail its season. Nevertheless, the theater has more recently secured resources both to commission fresh operas from living composers and to maintain its core repertory of Baroque- and Classical-period revivals. The Drottningholm Court Baroque Ensemble maintains close ties with its sister ensemble, the Drottningholm Court Theatre Orchestra.