Direction & Set Design: Karin Sjöholm
Conductor: Marco Crispo
Music: Igor Stravinsky
Libretto: Stepan Mitoussov
Re-orchestration: Andreas Hansson
Cast:
The Nightingale – Signe Sneh Durholm
The Kitchen Maid – Kristine Mågård
The Fisherman – Christian Damsgaard
The Emperor – Lars Fosser
The Bonze – Mikkel Thomsen
The Chamberlain – Martin Møller Vilbrand
Death – Emma Oemann
Production: Operaen i Midten 2022
The Emperor of China is surrounded by the most beautiful things in the world, yet the song of the nightingale surpasses them all. When the nightingale sings for the emperor, his happiness seems complete. One day, however, the emperor receives a magnificent mechanical bird, and the happiness proves short-lived as he soon finds himself close to death.
H.C. Andersen’s tale The Nightingale was transformed into an opera by Igor Stravinsky in the early twentieth century, adding a magical musical dimension to the story.
The performance questions the relationship between the natural and the man-made, a theme that is deeply relevant in today’s complex world.
In May 2022, director Karin Sjöholm , together with ornithologist Sebastian Klein and artist Janis Lynn Frank, led workshops at schools in Central Jutland, where children worked with the opera and produced eco-prints that are incorporated into the performance as the Nightingales’ costume.
