Decorum descends into chaos in this piercing new opera of trauma and complicity. Acclaimed contemporary composer Mark-Anthony Turnage (Anna Nicole, Coraline) and librettist Lee Hall (Billy Elliott) come together with director Richard Jones (La bohème, Samson et Dalila) to adapt Oscar-winning filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg’s (The Hunt, Another Round) 1998 film. An international cast conducted by Edward Gardner and led by Allan Clayton, Stéphane Degout and Gerald Finley takes on this operatic world premiere.

From Screen to Stage

The Danish avant-garde film movement Dogme95 that became infamous within the world of cinema in the late nineties began with Festen (The Celebration), Thomas Vinterberg’s international breakthrough and the source material for composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. With fellow film director Lars von Trier (Nymphomaniac, Melancholia, Breaking the Waves – the latter two adapted into operas), Vinterberg created a manifesto that intentionally mimicked French film auteur François Truffaut’s ‘Une certaine tendance du cinema’, the Cahiers du cinéma article that had launched the French New Wave movement in 1954.