The book is about Ludvig Josephson (1832-1899), Sweden's first professional theater and opera director, also active as a debater with a combative art policy and cosmopolitan agenda. His life is presented against the backdrop of changing European cultural life and the way in which he brought this new performing arts culture to Sweden by laying the foundations for the theater and opera repertoire in Stockholm that still forms the backbone of European repertory theater. In addition to the performing arts, this book is about Jewish identity at a time when new career paths were opening up for European Jews and the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the writer Heinrich Heine and the actress Rachel began to make their presence felt in Europe. The legacy of the 19th century in Europe was largely made up of the opera and the changing cityscape. The mental heritage of the era includes the emotional culture, which certainly had a long history, but which now came to affect more and more people. Ludvig Josephson not only sought inspiration in his travels, but was drawn to the freedom offered by continental European urban culture. His great dream was to bring Sweden closer to Europe and the world and to transform the provincial performing arts in Sweden into something more grand and artistically ambitious.