During the rainy second week of July we paid a visit to Sweden to meet our dear friends and undertake a cultural trip to the beautiful landscape of Dalecarlia, this time with the main purpose of educating ourselves in the field of classical music. We arrived at our hotel in Tällberg in pouring rain, and thus did not see much of the beautiful landscape. It has been said that, “If you are visiting Sweden and the county of Dalecarlia without visiting Tällberg, it’s like attending a wedding without meeting the bride.”
Tällberg is a little picturesque village located on the shores of Lake Siljan, in the Northern part of Leksand. The houses are made of wood, painted in the famous ‘Falu red’ colour with white ‘trimmings’ and surrounded by beautiful gardens with typical hurdle pole fences, Maypoles and wooden Dalecarlia horses in different sizes. Our hotel came with guaranteed fabulous views, but when looking out of our window we could only see something grey. On the third morning we could finally catch a glimpse of the famous lake Siljan, and mind you, only for five minutes.
The main purpose of our journey was a classical opera soirée at Dalhalla, hosted by famous Swedish Mezzo-Soprano, Malena Ernman and her prominent guests, Swedish Contralto Pers Anna Larsson and British Barytone Christopher Maltman accompanied by the Dalasinfonietta orchestra led by Gustaf Sjökvist and Mats Bergström playing the guitar. When we arrived at Dalhalla the rain was pouring down. Luckily we could buy some plastic raincoats with hoods, making us look like giant nursery kids on a wet outing. It didn’t matter much, because the whole audience looked the same.
We were impressed at first sight of the amphitheatre, located in a former limestone quarry in the beautiful town of Rättvik about 10 kilometres from our hotel. The quarry is 60 metres deep and 400 metres long, and its open air theatre has 4000 seats of which nearly all were taken. The repertoire contained masterpieces from operas by Mozart, Vivaldi, Verdi, Puccini, Saint-Saënz, Bizet and Wagner. In spite of the pouring rain, the audience sat as though bewitched for three hours.
Malena Ernman is a fabulous singer and a charming personality, witty and sensual. She really reached out to the audience, the Swedes call it to offer yourself, “bjuda på sig själv”. That’s something Swedish people are good at. Malena greeted us by saying that we were “the most beautiful audience she had ever seen,” and I refer to what is said above about how we looked.
Opera used to be something very serious, but this performance was far from it. Between the songs Malena made funny translations of the titles, and told us that her children had got lice in their kindergarten! When singing Carmen’s Habanera she plunged in the cold water surrounding the stage, joined by Christopher Maltman.
When getting out of the wet element she changed her dress and returned to the stage, singing some popular hits and making us dance to keep warm. Then at least you realize that this is an artist who does everything it takes to please her audience. An elderly couple in front of us jumped up and down to the music, hand in hand, and then the gentleman bent down and kissed his partner on the cheek. What an evening!