Phoenix

Fatal gala performance 

Come witness the burial of a real person at the Oslo Opera House! The fatal becomes festive and graveness turns to gladness when playwright, director and performing artist Lisa Lie invites audiences to a familiar ritual in a whole new style. Together we bring death to life – literally! 

On stage is Lisa Lie, the Opera Chorus, musicians, actors and singers. And the audience is invited to join in the mourning, the singing, the memorial and the celebration. It promises to be an evening of sing-a-longs, speeches, strange celestial phenomena, powerful rituals, stumbling blocks, compelling choral singing and intense, newly written music.  

Graveness and humour go hand in hand here. This festive performance will lift us, together with the actual protagonists, from the depths and into something overwhelmingly different and collective. 

An operatic resurrection parlour 

Some refer to opera as the ‘art of dying’: ars moriendi. From the very first opera that has survived, Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo (1607), the plot has revolved around death – and resurrection. When Orpheus loses his wife, he starts to sing to cope with his sorrow. And through music, he awakens Eurydice back to life.   

 In opera, we come together to practice dying and to practice losing. We encounter narratives that endlessly repeat the relentless fact that it will all end one day.  

Music makes it a little easier to deal with both death and life. And we get to do so as a community with other people, both those we are together with in the auditorium and those who lived before us and found solace in the very same music.  

In this sense, there are several parallels between opera and funeral ceremonies. These are explored in Phoenix, in which composer Stian Westerhus found inspiration in both opera and funeral music.    

Many interested in being buried at stage

We all have things we would like to change or put behind us, and many of us long to start a new chapter in life. We have now got several personswho want to take advantage of the creative and ritual power of the Oslo Opera House to bury their old self and be resurrected with pomp and circumstance. 

Each performance of Phoenix will be unique because a different person will be buried and resurrected each time. Their life story, friends and family will set the stage so to speak for that particular performance. Until the rehearsal in the spring of 2025, Lisa Lie will be working together with these individuals, who will have the opportunity to help shape their contribution to the work in close dialogue with the artistic team.  

Phoenix is part of a tripartite collaboration between the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra & Opera and Bergen National Opera. The goal of the partnership is to create more and exciting music drama. All of the projects will be shown in Oslo, Trondheim and Bergen.  Phoenix is the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra & Opera’s contribution to this project. 

The project is funded by Arts Council Norway