Petter Stenborg was a Swedish stage actor and theater director.
15 Facts About Petter Stenborg
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Petter Stenborg was the director of the Stenborg Company or Svenska Comoedi-truppen from 1758 onward and as such the director of the Humlegardsteatern in Stockholm.
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Petter Stenborg was initially a soldier of the Royal Guard.
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The Swedish language theater split in two travelling Swedish theater companies: the company of Peter Lindahl and Johan Bergholtz, and the Stenborg Company of Petter Stenborg, which became the first two Swedish language theater companies in Sweden.
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Petter Stenborg initially made an attempt to start an inn, but successfully applied for a theater permit in 1758, and formed the Stenborg Company.
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Petter Stenborg was the rival of the theater company of Peter Lindahl, who preferred to tour the Swedish country side, while Petter Stenborg mostly toured in Finland and in Stockholm.
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The Stenborg Company was ridiculed by the upper classes, who preferred the French language Du Londel theater and described Stenborg theater company as composed by a staff of actors from "jail, soldiers, alcoholic lawyers, servants and washing-women", its costumes from rag shops, the music from taverns and the plays as vulgar as the taverns in which they performed.
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However, these judgement was likely unfair, made by aristocrats who preferred the fashionable French language plays, and the Petter Stenborg Company was popular and appreciated by the public, though their trouble in finding suitable localities where a problem for their quality.
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Petter Stenborg sent a petition to the monarch and asked him to protect the native speaking theater.
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Petter Stenborg successfully petitioned for the use of the now empty Bollhuset theater building, and were allowed to perform a public play at the opening of the Riksdag of the Estates in 1772.
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The Petter Stenborg Company became very successful in Humlegarden as a part of the city's summer life, and staged Swedish language comedies, and popular parodies of the performances at the Royal Swedish Opera: the opera Thetis och Phelee, for example, became Petis och Nasenblomand Acis och Galathea became Kasper och Dorotea.
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Petter Stenborg had several children with Anna Sara Kruger, most notably Carl Stenborg.
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Petter Stenborg's wife had previously been the housekeeper of count Adam Horn and through her connections, their children were given a much better education than himself.
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Carl Petter Stenborg became a star singer of the Royal Opera, and though forbidden by his contract to perform in his father's theater, he acted as his adviser.
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In 1780, Petter Stenborg retired and transferred the leadership of the Stenborg Company to his son, who immediately secured a permanent theater building where the company could perform during the winters: the Eriksbergsteatern.