ASLE OG ALIDA • OPERAEN
★★★★★☆
Photo Miklos Szabo
REVIEW ASLE AND ALIDA: MUSICAL AND AESTHETIC DELIGHT
A newly written opera for connoisseurs is the Opera’s exciting offering to audiences in its presentation of Danish composer Bent Sørensen’s new work Asle and Alida. A musical/aesthetic delight in beautiful tones with large cinematic soundscapes that alternate between the tonal and the ethereal in a well-crafted flow.
The performance has a special biblical weight with its interpretive absence of spectacular action, which makes it about nothing and everything at the same time.
The protagonists, Asle and Alida, are a couple who, like a kind of Nordic Joseph and Mary, are looking for shelter when Alida is about to give birth to their child – but they encounter only hostility, rejection, and closed doors.
Photo Miklos Szabo
Only after a radical decision do they manage to gain a foothold in the insular Norwegian coastal town of Bjørgvin (Bergen) – a decision that will catch up with the couple towards the end, when it slowly unfolds that the seemingly innocent couple appear to have more skeletons in their closet.
A point of no return is reached at the end of the first act when the baby is born with black eyes, manifesting the dark undertone of the story.
Throughout the performance, we seem to encounter manifestations of human folly – self-righteous morality, lust, lewdness and corrupt power. Are we travelling with Dante through Purgatory and via a kind of Old Testament punishment and forgiveness on our way to Paradise?
Asle and Alida are like still waters with deep depths. Restrained and thought-provoking, clothed in luminous Nordic tones, with sharp lines of metallic staccato that cut into Bent Sørensen’s lyrical, glissando-marked soundscapes.
Photo Miklos Szabo
Asle and Alida are set in a gloomy, Nordic noir scenography by Erlend Birkeland with heavy stonework across the entire width of the stage. A cold atmosphere of coast and harbour pier against a backdrop of smouldering light through black metal.
– For me, opera is about faith, hope and love, and above all about the fusion of the three, says composer Bent Sørensen about his work. The libretto was written by Norwegian author Jon Fosse as a kind of summary of his well-known novel Trilogien.
Photo Miklos Szabo
Renowned Swedish director Sofia Adrian Jupither has staged this striking production, which features impressive vocal performances by Wiktor Sundqvist (Asle) and Louise McClelland Jacobsen (Alida).
A narrow, artistically high-quality experience that stays with you and earns five stars from GOT TO SEE THIS.
