their respective premieres on 17 April 1895 and 13 April 1896 were the culmination of his metamorphosis from Wagner acolyte to "tone painter" in the tradition of Liszt. But Sibelius probably thought the lottery soirée was a good cause, and moreover, a critical tool of the Finnish resistance. The musicologist and Sibelius biographer Glenda Dawn Goss describes these evenings as follows: Achté had earlier contracted the Finnish author Rafael Hertzberg to serve as librettist. Although little is known about Hertzberg's writing process, he produced a Swedish-language libretto based on a popular, traditional Karelian, Finnish-language folk ballad, (In a Maiden's Bower), which he described as "the oldest known Finnish drama—or rather an opera, because everything is sung". Sibelius began composing in August, and met Hertzberg on 24 September—a month that found Sibelius overworked, as he had taken on teaching responsibilities at the Imperial Alexander's University of Finland following the retirement of . According to Achté, by the time rehearsals began a fortnight before the premiere, Sibelius had not yet finished the finale: "I constantly have to ... give him a very necessary reminder that we can't guess what his music is; we need the notes on the page". Premiere Sibelius met his deadline, and The Maiden in the Tower premiered on 7 November 1896 at a sold-out concert in the ballroom of the . Ironically given Sibelius's repudiation of Wagner, the soirée began with the Helsinki Philharmonic Society—in the stands and directed by Kajanus—playing the march from the overture to Tannhäuser. Afterwards, Sibelius assumed conducting duties, with the twenty-person orchestra now positioned in the pit and, for dramatic effect, the amateur chorus behind the stage. The four soloists, who sang before a "striking" backdrop of a towered castle to the right of a springtime birch forest, were: the soprano as the Maiden, the baritone Abraham Ojanperä as the Bailiff, the tenor E. Eklund as the Lover, and Achté as the Chatelaine. At the end of the opera, the audience cheered Sibelius and the soloists to several curtain calls; the evening continued with the lottery as well as additional tableaux. The Maiden in the Tower was repeated on —the former for the benefit of the orchestra and music school, while the latter raised funds for Sibelius. The critics penned mixed reviews, skewering Hertzberg's libretto but mostly complimenting Sibelius's music. Hufvudstadsbladet printed an unsigned review that found the opera had a "genuinely Sibelian