(b Stockholm, 8 Dec 1626; d Rome, 19 April 1689). Swedish ruler and patron of music, active partly in Italy. She was one of the principal 17th-century patrons of arts and learning and for 30 years the leading figure in the cultural life of Rome.
Christina succeeded at the age of six to the throne of her father, Gustavus II Adolphus, hero of the Thirty Years War, who was killed at the Battle of Lützen in 1632. In accordance with his wishes she was given the education of a prince during the chancellorship of Axel Oxenstierna, and by 1644 she had achieved a reputation for intelligence, learning and culture. After the alliance with France in 1635, French culture began to assert itself at the Swedish court, and in 1637 she brought from France the dancing-master Antoine de Beaulieu. In 1646, to provide authentic music for the French ballets that quickly became the rage in Stockholm, she imported six French violinists, among them Pierre Verdier, who at first were established as a separate ensemble independent of the so-called German chapel of Andreas Düben. Other French musicians were brought in, and in 1647 the Swedish representative at Elsinore was instructed to engage English musicians formerly with the Danish king, but they seem not to have gone to Stockholm.
Of more far-reaching importance than the engagement of French musicians, however, was the contact that this rapprochement with France occasioned between the young queen and the remarkable French diplomat Pierre Chanut and, through him, Descartes. Descartes went to Stockholm at her invitation in October 1649. His first assignment was to collaborate on the ballet La naissance de la paix to be performed for her birthday in December, and thereafter he met her two or three times a week at 5 o’clock in the morning to discuss philosophy and mathematics. Though he died in February 1650, his impact on her was tremendous, and she later paid tribute to him, as well as to Chanut, for resolving many of the difficulties she encountered on her path to Catholicism.
For his part, Descartes could not praise the queen highly enough, but he complained that he had to compete with her interest in Greek, ancient philosophy and old books. These interests, combined with her well-known passion for music, made her the obvious dedicatee of Marcus Meibom’s Antiquae musicae auctores septem (Amsterdam, 1652). She promptly invited him to Stockholm, but his stay was brief and ended unhappily (see Marcus Meibom). He was named as assistant royal librarian, but Christina, having secretly decided early in 1652 to convert to the Catholic faith, abdicate her throne and take up residence in Rome, soon began smuggling her valuable library and art treasures out of Sweden to Antwerp. Simultaneously she transferred her musical interest from French ballet to Italian opera. In November 1652 an Italian troupe engaged for her by Alessandro Cecconi was attached to the court. Cecconi, himself a musician who became the queen’s trusted personal servant and continued in her service in Rome, had discharged his commission well; the troupe included a number of excellent musicians such as Domenico Albrici and his sons Vincenzo and Bartolomeo, Domenico and Nicola Melani and Pietro Reggio. Soon after the elaborate celebration of Christina’s coronation on 20 October 1650 (which continued into 1651) was concluded, the court’s German and French chapels joined forces under Düben’s direction, but the new Italian group remained independent under the leadership of Vincenzo Albrici. Curiously, no account survives of any operas performed by them, but a great deal of other Italian music from this period remains in Swedish sources. English music also made its appearance at Christina’s court with the arrival of an embassy from England headed by Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, representing Oliver Cromwell. The music-loving Whitelocke left a lively account of the young queen, and, like Cromwell and Milton, he esteemed her highly and praised her in eloquent terms. He reported that she admired the English music he had had performed for her and that she had requested him to obtain copies of it for her. It presumably included the viol music by Benjamin Rogers which is found in autograph sets in Uppsala University Library. Whitelocke also admired the excellent performances of Christina’s musicians, and it may have been through his friendship and encouragement that some of them went to England to pursue their careers after Christina left Sweden. One who did so was the virtuoso violinist Thomas Baltzar, and the Albricis and Reggio eventually made their way to England too.
Queen Christina abdicated her throne on 6 June 1654, for reasons which are still a matter of dispute, and left Sweden without delay. She went first to Antwerp and then to Brussels, where on Christmas eve she secretly embraced the Catholic faith. In the autumn of 1655 she proceeded to Innsbruck, where her official reception into the Church was celebrated, under the auspices of Archduke Ferdinand, with a week of festivities that included a performance of Cesti’s opera L’Argia. Her journey to Rome, which she reached just before Christmas, was nothing less than a triumphal procession accompanied by special entertainments and music at every stage (see illustration). She entered Rome through the Porta del Popolo, which still bears an inscription of welcome dated 1655. Pope Alexander VII received her for communion on Christmas Day and established her in Rome as if she were still a reigning monarch; in gratitude she added ‘Alexandra’ to her name. The celebrations in her honour continued in the New Year and included Marazzoli’s opera La vita humana (dedicated to her and performed on 31 January 1656) and a revival of his Le armi e gli amori, both given at the Palazzo Barberini; Il giudizio di Paride by Tenaglia, performed at the Palazzo Pamphili; and, at the Collegio Germanico, Carissimi’s Historia di Abraham et Isaac, with the lost Giuditta as an intermezzo.
Christina’s first residence in Rome was the Palazzo Farnese and she established herself at once as one of Rome’s leading cultural figures by founding an academy at which leading artistic and scholarly personalities met for the first time on 24 January 1656. This influential assembly, which had as its purpose the re-establishment of classical ideals, continued to meet until her death and beyond, when it became the Arcadian Academy. Though it was essentially a literary society, music occupied an important place in its activities, and every meeting ended with a concert. In 1680 Christina founded a second society in memory of her friend Pope Clement IX, the statutes of which stipulated the performance of a sinfonia and a vocal work at every meeting.
Late in 1656 and again during the period 1657–8 Christina was in France plotting with Mazarin for the throne of Naples. They were betrayed, however, and, invoking a royal prerogative, she had the Marchese di Monaldesco executed for his part in the affair. Shortly afterwards her favourite, the musician Alessandro Cecconi, died in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, into which she moved on her return from France in 1658. In 1659 she moved to the Palazzo Riario, where, except for a journey to Sweden (1660–62) and another to Hamburg (1666–8), she remained for the rest of her life. She added to her collection of treasures with such taste and to such purpose that her home became a virtual museum for connoisseurs and a haven for scholars (e.g. Kircher), artists (Bernini, Maratta), men of letters (Guidi, Filicaja, Menzini) and musicians, over which she presided as ‘Pallas nordica’. She built a theatre in her palace where she produced operas and plays, and in 1671 she opened the rebuilt Teatro Tor di Nona as the first public opera house in Rome with a performance of Cavalli’s Scipione affricano, now rededicated to her and provided with a new prologue by Stradella.
Numerous musicians were associated with her during her 30 years as the leading figure in the cultural life of Rome. Some, such as Marazzoli, Pasqualini, Vittori, Francesco Bianchi and Giuseppe Melani, were also musicians to Cardinal Antonio Barberini and may have been only shared or borrowed by her, though in 1656 Marazzoli was referred to as her virtuoso da camera. Other prominent figures who enjoyed her patronage and protection and dedicated works to her included Pasquini (the operas L’Alcasta, 1673, and Il Lisimaco, 1681), Alessandro Melani (L’empio punito, 1669), Corelli (op.1, 1681) and Alessandro Scarlatti, who at the age of 18 attracted her enthusiastic attention with his Gli equivoci nel sembiante to the extent that she defended him against the displeasure of Pope Innocent XI. She sponsored the performance of his L’honestà negli amori in 1680, and from then until he left to join the King of Naples in 1684 he was styled her maestro di cappella. In a letter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1706 he remembered this remarkable and perceptive woman and reported that the madrigals of Gesualdo pleased her more than anything else. In 1687, on the arrival of Lord Castlemaine from England to reopen diplomatic relations with the Vatican, she held a special meeting of her academy to celebrate the coronation of the Catholic James II two years before. For this meeting Pasquini composed his Accademia per musica to a text by Guidi, which was performed by an assembly of 150 musicians led by Corelli.
After Christina’s death 1900 books and manuscripts from her library went to the Vatican, where they have been admired and used by scholars (e.g. Burney) ever since. She was buried in S Pietro.
J. Arckenholtz: Mémoires concernant Christine reine de Suède (Amsterdam, 1751–60)
H. Reeve, ed.: B. Whitelocke: A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654 (London, 1855)
A. Cametti: ‘Cristina di Svezia: l’arte musicale e gli spettacoli teatrali in Roma’, Nuova antologia, ccxxxix (1911), 641–56
J. Grönstedt: Svenska hoffester, i: Baletter, idyller, kostymbaler, spektakler och upptåg uppförda vid drottning Christinas hof åren 1638–1654 (Stockholm, 1911)
A. Sandberger: ‘Drottning Kristinas förhållande till italiensk opera och musik, särskilt til M.A. Cesti’, STMf, vi (1924), 97–123; vii (1925), 25–45; Ger. orig., Bulletin de la Société ‘Union musicologique’, v (1925), 121–73
T. Norlind and E. Trobäck: Kungl. hovkapellets historia, 1526–1926 (Stockholm, 1926)
C.-A. Moberg: Från kyrko- och hovmusik till offentlig konsert [From church and court music to the public concert] (Uppsala, 1942/R)
T. Norlind: Från tyska kyrkans glansdagar [From the golden age of the German church], ii (Stockholm, 1944)
N. Schiørring: ‘En svensk kilde til belysning af “Les 24 violons du Roi’s” repertoire’, STMf, xxxvi (1954), 26–37
E. Sundström: ‘Notiser om drottning Kristinas italienska musiker’, STMf, xliii (1961), 297–309
R. Cotte: Compositeurs français émigrés en Suède (Paris, 1962)
C.-A. Moberg: ‘Vincenzo Albrici (1631–1696): eine biographische Skizze mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner schwedischen Zeit’, Festschrift Friedrich Blume, ed. A.A. Abert and W. Pfannkuch (Kassel, 1963), 235–46
C. Weibull: Drottning Christina (Stockholm, 1931, 3/1961; Eng. trans., 1966, as Christina of Sweden)
G. Masson: Queen Christina (London, 1968)
L. Jonsson, ed.: Musiken i Sverige, i: Från forntid till Stormaktstidens slut [Music in Sweden, i: Prehistory to the end of Sweden’s period as a great power] (Stockholm, 1994)
Cristina di Svezia e la musica: Rome 1996
JOHN BERGSAGEL
