Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt: Dijon Opera

Sobre o Evento

The famous song of Solveig, the Penelope of the North who waits faithfully for the man to whom she is promised, often hides the true nature of Ibsen’s text, and Grieg’s music.

Unclassifiable within the world of theatre, as much drama as poetry, as much fantasy as philosophy, in verse and bitter‐sweet satirical farce on the quest for identity and happiness, Peer Gynt is above all the story of an anti‐hero, inflicted with every vice, fleeing all duty in the wide world, all commitment and all reality.

From the cave of the legendary Mountain King, peopled with trolls and demons, to the gates of Paradise where he accompanies his mother, from the Morocco of legend to the Egyptian desert, his life is a long succession of good fortune and brutal deception.

For this play, so far removed from all classicism, which seeks to invent a new theatre, the stage music that the young 30‐year‐old Grieg wrote at Ibsen’s request met with immediate success and set the composer on the road to glory.

It is, however, only extremely rarely that one can hear the complete work in the theatrical context for which it was designed. This is what Emmanuelle Cordoliani proposes in this version that restores Grieg’s music to its original intent: accompany and carry a drama in which the music acts as an integral element, one that is illuminated by the drama in return. With actors, a soloist and the choirs of the Dijon Opera all incarnating the multiple protagonists of the piece, the performance seeks to revive the innovative spirit first breathed into the work at its premiere. The Orchestra Dijon Bourgogne is conducted by Gergely Madaras, finalist at the International Young Orchestra Conductors Competition in Besançon in 2011.

Semi‐theatrical operatic version

Libretto Henrik Ibsen
Music Edvard Grieg

Orchestre Dijon Bourgogne
Dijon Opera Choir

Conductor Gergely Madaras
StagingEmmanuelle Cordoliani
Stage design and costumes Julie Scobeltzine
Vocal coach Nicolas Chesneau
Choir director Mihály Menelaos Zeke
Piano Maurizio Prosperi
TranslationFrançois Régnault

Decors in collaboration with the Marcs d’Or high school of Dijon