The court remained at Christiansborg throughout the winter, and Brandt, who was now established as a sort of master of the revels, had the arrangement of all the festivities. His first step was to alter and redecorate the royal theatre in Copenhagen at great cost, and arrange a series of operas. For the first time in Denmark, since the Reformation, performances were given on Sunday, and Sunday came to be regarded as the gala night at the opera, when the King and Queen would attend. This gave fresh offence to the puritan party in Copenhagen. The rearranging of the royal theatre was used as an occasion for offering a further slight to the Queen-Dowager and her son. They had hitherto been accustomed to share the King's box, but now they were allotted one of their own. The Queen-Dowager rarely attended operas, but Prince Frederick did, and the excuse put forward was that there was no room for the Prince in the royal box; but when, after protest, he yielded the point, Struensee and Brandt appeared in the box, and seated themselves immediately behind the King and Queen. Struensee turned his attention to the court, and soon the new brooms were busily sweeping out this Augean stable of privilege and corruption. The expenditure of the court was carefully revised, a great many useless offices, chiefly held by the younger sons of the nobility, were abolished, and pensions and salaries greatly reduced. The King of Denmark was burdened with a great number of costly palaces, which were always in need of repair. None of these palaces was closed, but the embellishment of them, which was always going on, was commanded to cease. By order of the late King Frederick V. the building of a marble church, to be named after him Frederiks-Kirke, had been begun in Copenhagen, after magnificent designs by Jardin, the French architect. The building of this church, which had now been going on for twenty years at enormous cost, crippled the treasury. Struensee, who considered the building of churches as useless waste, put a stop to the works, and broke the contracts with the builders. The church remained half-finished.[162] This occasioned much discontent; the contractors declared that they were ruined, the architect was loud in his complaints, artists protested against the vandalism of abandoning so magnificent an undertaking, and the clergy were scandalised that the house of the Lord should be left in this condition while large sums were squandered upon masquerades and play-houses. It is true that Struensee's changes in the court did not effect much economy, for the perpetual round of entertainments and festivities organised by Brandt more than ate up anything that might be saved in another direction.