Opera is perhaps the dramatic genre least connected with the name Strindberg. To put it cautiously, in comparison to Strindberg's extensive and multifaceted œuvre—the plays, books, drawings, scholarly treatises, countless letters and even paintings and compositions—opera has not figured prominently in Strindberg research. Nevertheless, in his records, especially in his letters, we can clearly see that Strindberg was concerned with opera, in the sense of adapting his plays into musical stage works. In his records we see Strindberg working vehemently to open this door for his plays, plying his brother Carl Axel, a composer (Heesch 2006:69–71) and approaching other musicians and thespians. To his great discontent though, his efforts are fruitless—throughout his life, Strindberg remains a blank opera page.

It was years after his death when the first opera based on one of Strindberg's texts, The Crown Bride (Kronbruden), premiered set to music composed by Ture Rangström: first in Stuttgart in 1919—in German—and then the Swedish original in Stockholm in 1922. Since then, several composers have dedicated themselves to parts of Strindberg's voluminous work (Heesch 2006:482–483). Without a doubt, Strindberg's position in the literary canon contributed to his popularity in music theatre. At the same time, the constant ‘adaptations’ of his works reinforced his position as the ‘godfather’ of Swedish literature. But what happens when music and text meet; when tones and words fuse into something new—when, as Koestenbaum writes, there is “the unspeakable marriage of words and music” (Koestenbaum 1993:176–178)?

Using the example of the first ‘Strindberg opera’, Ture Rangström's The Crown Bride, I will pursue and illuminate upon the question of how the literary source is enriched by the musical arrangement. I hope to show that Ture Rangström's music holds more than a ‘key’ to understanding the literary text. My thesis is that with the aid of folkloristic elements and fairy tale motives anchored in the text, Rangström successfully maps a nightmarish, insecure, modern society in his opera The Crown Bride. The opera thus distances itself from the romantic Swedish image shaped by the likes of Carl Larsson as it appears in Strindberg's work, and has to be considered one of the key works of 20th century Swedish operatic literature.