Norwegian Opera

This is a web site about Norwegian Opera — that is to say, about operas written by Norwegian born (or naturalized) composers.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there was no such thing as Norwegian Opera: after all, Norway's only really world-famous composer, Edvard Grieg, never finished his only attempt in the genre (Olav Trygvason). But you would be mistaken — as indeed I was. Right now this site covers no fewer than 117 operas by 51 composers, dating from 1825 to the present day. Of the 53 operas written in or before 1940, most are completely forgotten today, even in Norway — but not through any fault of their own. In fact, only 27 have ever been performed and of those, only half have been seen by audiences in Norway.

This strange state of affairs is due to the fact that Norway did not have its own opera house until 1959. For over a century, operas were only produced in theatres, usually in the face of opposition from the theatrical establishment. And because there was no opera house, there was also no permanent opera company, and those operas that were performed were given by visiting troupes, who naturally didn't have Norwegian works in their repertoire.

The upshot of all this was that Norwegian composers who were interested in opera faced a choice between writing for their desk drawer or else working abroad, usually in Germany. Many of the operas composed around the turn of the 19th century were therefore written in German; some were performed in Germany and a few made it to Norway for one or two seasons, but none were able to establish themselves as part of the Norwegian musical tradition.

Which is a great pity, because some of them, at least, are absolutely worth listening to. One particular gem, Thora paa Rimol, written by the 30-year old Hjalmar Borgstrøm in 1894, has all the qualifications necessary to fill the role of Norway's National Opera: written by a Norwegian composer to a Norwegian text, based on an episode of Norwegian history as told by Snorre Sturlasson in his saga of the kings of Norway, Heimskringla, and with music of exceptional beauty and drama. It is guaranteed to appeal to anyone who likes the operas of Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, or even Wagner. (That guy Borgstrøm must have known Lohengrin at the very least!) It is my modest hope that this site will contribute to the rediscovery of at least some of these works.

The site is built around a topic map that was originally developed as a term paper for a course on Opera and Music Theatre at the University of Oslo. Everything on the site (except for this introduction) is part of the topic map itself, which can be viewed in its ‛raw’ form (and also exported to a reusable interchange syntax) using the Omnigator. The topic map can be thought of as a little ‛knowledge base’ of Norwegian Opera, at present still somewhat incomplete. It will be updated from time to time as my research progresses, so if you have any comments, additions or corrections, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Steve Pepper
Oslo, 2007-06-12