Venue: Drottningholm Palace Theatre
Town: Ekerö, SE

The Drottningholm Palace Theatre (Swedish: Drottningholms slottsteater) is an opera house located at Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm, Sweden. It is one of the few 18th-century theatres in Europe that is still used as a theatre with its original stage machinery. Currently, the reinvigorated theatre has acquired a growing international reputation as a summer opera festival theatre by focusing on works by Haydn, Handel, Gluck and Mozart and emphasis on authentic performance. The theatre has also had guest performances by the Royal Swedish Opera. The first theatre to be built on the Drottningholm site was built at the behest of Queen Lovisa Ulrika by the German master builder Georg Greggenhofer (1718 or 1719-1779). The theatre opened in 1754 and hosted a new troupe of French actors, the Du Londel Troupe, that had been engaged by the court a year earlier and was to use the theatre until 1771. The troupe used the theatre in the summer months to show French theatre and Italian opera for the Queen and her court. When the original theatre burned down on 27 August 1762 during the performance of a comic opera, Queen Lovisa Ulrika quickly decided to rebuild a theatre for the Drottningholm Palace court, commissioning a replacement opera house by Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz. Work began on the building in 1764, and it eventually included the theatre as well as a complex of smaller chambers off the main auditorium to house members of the court who did not stay at the palace, including Adelcrantz, the master of the revels, the noble chambermaids, the actors and staff of the theatre, and young aristocrats. The building that Adelcrantz created was unusual architecturally in several respects. Most notably, although the theatre was intended to mimic Versailles's artistic style, the lack of funds of the Swedish Treasury forced a much sparser style. The exterior of the building is very plain in comparison to other palatial theatres, in the style of a country manor with no indication from th