This year's Bergen International Festival is filled with unmissable music.
An opera about loneliness and the need for others, and chamber music inspired by mathematics and visual arts.
From May 21 to June 4, 2025, Bergen International Festival will take over the Norwegian city, offering everything from opera to dance, to chamber music and theatre.
Therese Ulvo and Marit Eikemo's opera Terminus continues its voyage
Commissioned by three major opera houses in Norway, The Norwegian National Opera, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra & Opera and Bergen National Opera, Therese Ulvo and Marit Eikemo's opera Terminus is a modern retelling of the Nordic classic Jeppe on the Hill (Jeppe på Bjerget) by Ludvig Holberg.
Terminus is about loneliness and the need for others.
What kind of responsibility do we have to each other – and what does that entail nowadays?
What exactly does it mean to be sick – or healthy?
What is real and what is staged?
These are the questions asked by Terminus, but without providing any clear answers.
- Therese Ulvo
A new version of Rolf Wallin's Whirld Alone
This splendid concert with violinist Inga Våga Gaustad and pianist Joachim Carr, presents the Premiere of a new version of Rolf Wallin's Whirld Alone. This new version is the result of the collaboration between the composer and Inga Våga Gaustad.
Whirld Alone is the aptly titled solo version of Wallin's violin concerto Whirld.
When asked about the work, Gaustad says:
It’s an energetic, rhythmically intriguing piece with lots of cool built-in harmonies.
Mazzoli on the programme
May 31, 2025
Same day, at the Norwegian virtuoso and composer Ole Bull's home, two enchanting concerts with young, award-winning rising stars from the Nordic countries. Both concerts include Missy Mazzoli's music.
The first concert, with Cellist Hugo Svedberg and violinists Annissa Gybel and Helga Diljá Jörundsdóttir, has Mazzoli's Kinski Paganini on the programme.
In 1989 Klaus Kinski wrote, directed, and starred in the surreal, sublime, touching and ultimately ridiculous film "Paganini." My short composition for violinist Jennifer Koh, Kinski Paganini, references Paganini's 24th Caprice, but is also a nod to the unbridled energy of the late German actor/director/madman. Kinski's portrayal required him to smash his instrument against walls, tear through every room in an inexplicable rage, and "play" his violin with a devilish intensity. Any hope or memory of musical accuracy is obliterated in this film, and replaced with a passion and humanity that is possibly even closer to how we experience music in our hearts.
- Missy Mazzoli
The second concert, with cellist Birgitta Elisa Oftestad, includes Mazzoli's Beyond the Order of Things.
The work is a response to a 2020 painting by Charline von Heyl, itself a response to Botticelli’s Primavera painting from the late 1400’s. Von Heyl’s work incorporates images and figures from the Botticelli, but they are smudged, faded, obscured. In composing Beyond the Order of Things I replicated, in music, von Heyl’s technique of erasing and recontextualizing source material from the Renaissance. I transcribed a vocal motet, Praeter rerum serium (translation: Beyond the Order of Things) by Botticelli’s contemporary Josquin des Prez. Like von Heyl, I reworked this material, repeating fragments and chopping up phrases, to create an entirely new work that is a beautifully corrupted translation of the original.
- Missy Mazzoli
