the benefit of musician Petter Lillström, spouse of the Swedish actress Elisabeth Lillström. The French Du Londel Troupe followed the court and they stayed in only in winter. The French troupe held a high class and performed the latest plays from Paris, but as the public in general did not speak French, it was foremost a pleasure for the upper-classes, though the public seems to have enjoyed the visual effects. The building was also used for public masquerade balls; the first was organized already in 1701 by the French troupe of Rosidor, and the 1763 year carnival on Bollhuset attracted 600 guests and gave profit of §6000. The second national theater and Opera In 1771, king Gustav III of Sweden fired the French theater company, and the Swedish actors, led by Petter Stenborg, then saw their chance and asked to perform a play at the opening of the parliament of 1772. At the opening of parliament in 1772, the troupe of Petter Stenborg appeared before King Gustav III and all the public in Bollhuset after the French troupe had left it, and after this, the monarch decided to found a native speaking opera and theatre. The 18 January 1773, the opera Thetis and Phelée, performed by Carl Stenborg and the concert-singer Elisabeth Olin in the leading roles, inaugurated the Royal Swedish Opera, which was a great success. This was an opera, not a theater, and the attempts to perform speaking drama was not very successful. At the inauguration, the building had been redecorated; the walls were painted in greyish-yellow, the boxes in red, except for the Royal box, which was painted in blue and gold and the sealing a sky in white and gold. In 1781 the king, in his effort to establish a Swedish theater, hired a group of French actors, led by Jacques Marie Boutet de Monvel, to educate and perform with the first generation of new Swedish-speaking actors at Bollhuset. The opera was the year after, in 1782, moved to the new building of the Swedish Royal Opera and separated from the talking-part actors, and this is considered the beginning of the Swedish theater. The French troupe first performed at court, but begun to perform for the public in Bollhuset in 1783; in the absence of an organised theatre School, the future Swedish actors became students of the French troupe, which educated several of the later famous