The Bergen International Festival, Den Nye Opera (the New Opera) and the Norwegian Armed Forces Band, Western Norway combine forces to produce a large-scale opera during the 2010 festival in the beautiful surroundings of the historic parade ground at Bergenhus Fortress.
- Anne Pedersdotter is a psychological drama that provides insight into a murky part of our history, but the opera is at once dramatic, lyrical and humorous, says festival director Per Boye Hansen.
Gruesome witch trials
The opera Anne Pedersdotter takes us back to Bergen at the end of the sixteenth century. The whole of Europe was affected by gruesome witch trials, which convicted over fifty thousand people of witchcraft. The trial of Anne Pedersdotter is one of the most dramatic in Norway, and holds a special place in history, possibly because she belonged to high Bergen society and was convicted by her own powerful friends.
- This opera contains one of the best portraits of a woman I know of. The psychological development makes it an extremely powerful piece. I am really looking forward to working on it at Bergenhus Fortress, where we know Anne Pedersdotter frequently came to visit, says the opera’s director Knut Hendriksen (picture), a former managing director of the Norwegian Opera and long-standing director at the Stockholm Opera.
He has found exactly the person he was looking for to play the part of Anne. The Swedish soprano Ingela Brimberg (picture) has received excellent reviews for her interpretations of major female operatic roles.
Love magic and black arts
Edvard Fliflet Bræin’s opera Anne Pedersdotter is based on the stage play of the same name by Hans Wiers-Jenssen. When he wrote it at the beginning of the twentieth century it was almost immediately translated into several languages and the story was thus already familiar to audiences outside Norway when Bræin wrote his opera in 1971. Respighi’s opera La Fiamma (The Flame) is also based on Wiers-Jenssen’s play.
Within a historic framework a gripping love story unfolds. The drama begins with the younger wife of a priest falling for her stepson, who is closer to her own age. Their romantic involvement rapidly turns into an obsession, and when Anna’s husband shortly afterwards falls ill and dies, most people do not consider his death to have been coincidental. Anne Pedersdotter must be a witch, and if she is not burnt at the stake, she will burn in hell for eternity.
- Even though this particular problem is fortunately a relic of bygone times, the piece has as its theme a moralism that we can still experience today, says Stein Henrichsen, director of Den Nye Opera