Photo: Henrik Ohsten, Holland House
Musical Theatre
By Michael Eigtved
Danish stages are teeming with performances in which music plays a crucial role. The spectrum includes everything from experimental avant-garde to opera to major musicals. A steadily growing undergrowth of chamber opera projects and minor ensembles has put its stamp on the overall scene, when it comes to new compositions. A number of them prioritize the use of new digital media and powerful visual expression. The Royal Danish Opera has also made it a goal to have a Danish world premiere every season.
Denmark experienced a veritable musical tidal wave since the beginning of the 1990s. This has resulted in the rise of several independent musical companies with a concomitant rise in the level of performance on Danish stages. A number of Danish composers and writers have tried their hand at the genre, and world premieres of original Danish musicals are a recurring event. Musical theatre in Denmark is marked by vital development and great public interest.
Avant-garde and experiments
Over the past decade, a number of experiments with musical theatre productions have taken place – some, the works of trendsetting ensembles; some, in the form of innovative musical drama at established theatres.
With the opening of Den Anden Opera in Copenhagen in 1995, experimental chamber music theatre found a home. Here, 2-3 new productions are mounted annually, and all aspects of the boundaries of musical theatre – particularly, with respect to new compositions – are continuously explored.
The same can be said of the theatre Holland House, under the artistic direction of Jacob F. Schokking. For more than 10 years, it has set a new agenda – particularly, for the use of visual elements such as projections, light and digital techniques in an interplay with music. Out of this, a series of watershed performances arose – most recently, Neither by Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman (2005).
The performance art theatre Hotel Pro Forma and its director Kirsten Dehlholm have also contributed to this genre-exploring and visually-challenging musical theatre. This is true, for example, of Operation : Orfeo with libretto by Ib Michael and music by Bo Holten.
Opera
The explosion of interest in opera has caught on in Denmark. A number of minor ensembles and institutions have flourished in recent years along side the mastodons of the Royal Danish Opera and the Danish National Opera.
Initiatives such as the Århus Summer Opera, which takes place every summer in Århus’ Old Town, have contributed much to renewing the operatic form through new staging of classic works. The original artistic director Kasper Bech Holten continued this effort, when he commenced his duties in 2000 as head of the Royal Danish Opera. In 2004, a new opera house was built at the Copenhagen harbour front. Bech Holten has been an exponent for a policy of making not only classical works a part of the theatre’s repertoire but also world premieres of Danish productions.
Composer Paul Ruder’s A Handmaid’s Tale from 2000 (based on Margaret Atwood’s novel) and John Frandsen’s Ikon (2003) brought the opera into the 21st century with performances dealing with such contemporary topics as gene technology and business culture.
Popular musical theatre
In the slipstream of the wave of musicals in the 1990s, signalled by the Danish production of Les Misérables in 1992, a tradition arose for new Danish musicals. Each season offers one or more world premieres of Danish productions, written either in a traditional Broadway style or as through-composed performances without dialogue.
The major theatres in the capital of Copenhagen and regional stages around Denmark have particularly cultivated the genre. One common figure is composer Knud Christensen who, under his artistic name Sebastian, has written and composed a number of musical productions. The biggest success was Cyrano from 1992, based on Rostand’s play. Later came The Hunchback of Notre Dame (2001), among others. Several independent companies have also acted at the initiative of one of its new stars, Stig Rossen, who founded his career as Jean Valjean in the London production of Les Miserables.
Moreover, popular foreign musicals, such as Grease or Phantom of the Opera, are performed in translated versions. More recent lesser-known productions, such as Alistair Beaton’s Let’s Kick Ass (2005), a satirical musical about the Iraq war, have also found their way to the stage.
The establishment of Det Danske Musical Akademi [The Danish Musical Academy] in Fredericia is a sign that people take the genre more seriously. The academy offers a recognized, 3-year education for musical performers, using prominent international guest instructors.
Cross-over
A number of different initiatives may be found in the cross-over field in which popular music, theatre, cabaret and performance art meet. Odense Internationale Musikteater, with composer and actor Chris Jordan, has distinguished itself in recent years – first, in 1999, with a production of Lulu based on Frank Wedekind’s plays and, later, Citizen - en tabloid-opera, based on a theme from Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane.
The phenomenon of theatre concerts has been resurrected. The production of Gasolin (2000) at Dr. Dantes Aveny theatre set the trend: theatre concert is well-known music – here, from a Danish rock band that had broken up years ago – staged theatrically. Østre Gasværk Teater also exploits this genre – most recently, Simon (2005), a theatre concert about the king of Danish charter tours.
At the other end of the scale, we find the Betty Nansen Teater’s collaboration with the super-director Robert Wilson. His production of Woyzeck (2002), based on Georg Büchner’s play, set new records with an elegant interplay between staging and musical tools. A number of what have become called art-musicals have since seen the light of day and have been part of making Danish musical theatre into a multi-facetted field.
Danish musical theatre internationally
All types of Danish musical theatre have been presented internationally. The performance art theatre Hotel Pro Forma has toured intensively all over the world – particularly with Operation : Orfeo. In 2003, Paul Ruders’ opera A Handmaid’s Tale, which was written in both Danish and English, premiered in an English version at the English National Opera and later toured to the US and Canada.
Popular musical theatre has also been exported beyond the borders of Denmark. Sebastian’s musical Cyrano has had magnificent productions in Berlin at the legendary Theater des Westens and at Oscars Teater in Stockholm. His musical adaptations of Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja the Robber’s Daughter and Pippi Longstocking have been mounted in countless versions all over Europe. Curiously, in1997, Betty Nansen was able to export their updated version of the rock musical Hair to Paris, where musicals are not so common.
All in all, Danish musical theatre is at a quite high level – even measured by international standards.
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Erik Exe Christoffersen (MA). Lecturer of Esthetics and Cultural Studies, Aarhus University.
