While Atterberg's symphonies are still performed, his operas, including Aladdin, fell into oblivion. Some critics regard the opera as a 'musical cross of the Orientalism in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's operas together with string-movements and background choirs from American pop-songs'. 'The opera is dominated by a bright timbre, large melodic lines and sprinklings of oriental folklore'.

The opera employs a late-romantic-dramatic sound language. He adopted numerous ideas from those compositions for Aladdin. 1 from 1913, Atterberg had repeatedly tried to incorporate oriental motifs into his works, without lasting success. Due to political correctness the libretto differs from the original one in 1941 and places the plot in the present, into a former central Asian Soviet Union. The leading roles were performed by Michael Ha (Aladdin), Solen Mainguene (Laila), Frank Blees (Nazzreddin), Selcuk Hakan Tirasoglu (beggar/Dschababirah) and Oleksandr Pushniak (Muluk). On 11 March 2017, only the third performance worldwide was staged at the Staatstheater Braunschweig under the musical supervision of Jonas Alber, which was broadcast via Deutschlandfunk Kultur and was received with excitement by the critics. I believe in the lasting success of this work.', the success was modest and there were no performances ever since. Although the artistic director ecstatically stated: 'Applause broke out right after the overture and increased from scene to scene, culminating in a standing ovation. The German premiere took place on 18 October 1941 at the Theater Chemnitz. Together with a 1968 recording of the overture, this remained the only recording of the opera until 2017 (see below).Įinar Andersson (Aladdin), Ruth Moberg (Laila), Joël Berglund (Muluk), Björn Forsell, Arne Wirén, Leon Björker and Folke Johnson performed in the world premiere. The first act of the world premiere was broadcast by the Swedish Broadcasting Service, and was recorded on an acetate disk. However, the opera was not the success they hoped for and was put on only eleven times. Atterberg was satisfied with the production, except for the dances.

Several members of the Swedish royal house were attending the performance, including the king Gustaf V of Sweden. The premiere of Aladdin took place in 1941 at the Royal Swedish Opera of Stockholm in Swedish and was conducted by S.

Ruth Moberg as princess Laila in the original 1941 production.

Aladdin boston opera house