Echo of a silent scream: Bent Sørensen’s Asle and Alida premieres at Bergen National Opera

At the Grieghallen, a team of stellar citizens of the Scandinavian republic of culture joined forces to produce a new operatic enterprise at Bergen National Opera, based on a psychological narrative by Jon Fosse. It poses questions about the nature of human vulnerability when exposed to the heartlessness of ordinary people in a world devoid of pity, common decency and seemingly lacking any sense of a moral compass. The result of that enterprise is 90 minutes of powerful drama set to music haunted by the past and driven along by strong performances by a talented cast.

For the libretto Fosse, a native of Bergen and recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature, adapted his Trilogy novellas. I was curious to see how he would approach it given that the story was set as recently as 2021 by Peter Eötvös and Mari Mezei (Sleepless). The musical setting is by Danish composer Bent Sørensen, who adds an additional character, Fiddle player (Alma Serafin Kraggerud), and presents Åsleik as mainly a spoken role. Sørensen’s opening gesture, an octave glissando on violins, was immediately arresting; its reverberation was heard throughout the score. Plaudits must go to the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; Johannes Gustavsson drew from them magical playing from the intricacies of the score and gave solid support to the singers. The Edvard Grieg Choir, well-drilled by Chorusmaster Håkon Matti Skrede, acted as internal narrator for the discontinuous narrative, and as the vocal conscience of the characters.

The adventurous Sofia Adrian Jupither mounted a rugged production with strong support from her regular collaborative team. Erlend Birkeland’s set foregrounds the action on the banks of a fjord and the background as a rigid stage for the stern and shadowy chorus. His textures of flint and slate come into their own when energised by the heat of Ellen Ruge’s lighting, which favours the lurid glow of sodium. Fosse’s narrative is set in a timeless Bjørgvin but the characters live a coastal life and work in port-based employment, which Maria Geber’s costumes sombrely captures. That sense of drabness is heightened by Emi Stahl’s bleak video projections. 

The titular characters are teenagers adrift in an unforgiving world. Asle (tenor Wiktor Sundqvist) is an unemployed fiddler, and Alida (soprano Louise McClelland) is heavily pregnant. As relatively newcomers to opera both were well-suited to their roles. Sundqvist had a stage presence that was increasingly desperate, and it was matched by the mounting tension in his voice. McClelland was all reticence and inner turmoil until forced to face the fact that her mother had been murdered by her lover. The outpouring of grief evinced a series of stratospheric pianissimi that took ones breath away. 

The pair make a series of increasingly desperate and unwise decisions which hasten their descent into penury and the bosom of a pitiless underworld, encountering a group of individuals who are fully paid-up members of the union of baddies, including the Older Woman (Randi Stene), whose viciousness makes her one of Asle’s victims. Then there is The Older Man (baritone Johannes Weisser); he knew how to be sleazy in voice and deed. Quickly following him was The Younger Woman (Christina Jønsi) who auditioned for the role of a harlot without a heart and firmly nailed it, upstaging all the others in vocal performance.

After Alse is hanged as a murderer, Alida falls prey to an unscrupulous adventurer in the shape of Åsleik (actor Frank Kjosås). It is at this point that I have to raise one of my reservations about the production. Giving this character a speaking role undercuts the menace and mendacity that is so obviously central to his view of life and his attitude towards women (a trait he shares with the rest of the pack). Kjosås could not be faulted in the tone of his delivery but his inducements to Alida would have been more dramatically powerful if they had been sung. My second reservation concerns the addition of the Fiddle player to the narrative, possibly an attempt to expand the dramatic range of the piece. Alma Serafin Kraggerud’s playing was mellow and soulful but it impeded the action's narrative flow. Finally, I have to raise a doubt about whether the score could not have been presented as a continuous narrative. The 30-minute break between the first act (one hour) and the second (30 minutes) takes some of the heat out of the production.

Despite these reservations, this was a production full of insight into Fosse’s indictment of a community all at sea and drifting into a howling storm.

Christopher's press trip was funded by Bergen National Opera

This review was amended after BNO pointed out that it was the composer and not Jon Fosse who wrote in an additional character and made one of the parts a speaking role.