⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Five stars

Wild and whacky seem inadequate words to describe the intoxicating mash-up of contemporary cultural references layered over Strauss’s 1874 operetta Die Fledermaus. The outrageous mix of ideas in some ways shouldn’t have worked, yet this ambitious production from Bergen National Opera, in collaboration with the city’s national theatre, was a triumph.

This was in large part due to a witty new adaptation of the opera by Danish screenwriter Adam Price (writer of TV drama Borgen) translated into Norwegian by actor Eirik del Barco Soleglad. He included many local in-jokes, played up the Bergen/Oslo rivalry and was also hilarious as the bumbling Columbo-inspired Detective Frosch. It’s the same team that delivered Lehár’s The Merry Widow 2.0 for BNO in 2022.

Tormod Løvold as Dahl in Die Fledermaus | Photo credit: Magnus Skrede

Theatre director Yngve Sundvor, making his opera debut, took this raw material and unleashed his imagination and that of his creative team. Set designer Even Børsum’s bright white backdrop with its split level was perfect for the action and included a large screen for video designer Einar Bjarkø’s pre-recorded action and real time texts, often telling a different story to what was happening on stage.

During the upbeat overture we see footage of a boy’s night out in Oslo, it’s not a pretty sight. Malmberg (Anton Ljungqvist), Blind (Mads Wighus), Dahl (Tormod Løvold) and Falke (Johannes Weisser) drink and snort coke before leaving the latter dressed as Batman in the lobby of his investment company with a sign on his lap: 'The Dark Knight Never Rises'. Then in Act 1 when Malmberg and his wife Rosalinde (Ivi Karnezi) are arguing about his imminent arrest for insider trading, he is texting about going by helicopter to Bergen that night for a masked ball, while she is simultaneously texting her yoga teacher/lover Alfredo (Bror Magnus Tødenes). As his passion stirred, his emojis went from hearts to aubergines.

The cast of Die Fledermaus | Photo credit: Magnus Skrede 

The laughs and surprises kept coming in the Act 2 Pink Party with Adrian Angelico as the flamboyant host Karl-Maria Ulriken making quite an entrance. It starts on video with him lounging on a piano, with Leif Ove Andsnes no less at the keyboard, on top of a Bergen mountain. Ulriken then launched into Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now before donning a jet pack to zoom down into Greighallen. The on-form chorus were clad in Helena Andersson’s dazzling costumes in at least 50 shades of pink. 

Each performance features a surprise Bergen celeb. On the opening night, it was former Prime Minister Erna Solberg who led the audience in singing the city’s Song to Bergen.

There were solid performances all round, especially rising star Annika Beinnes as Imelda the Malmberg’s au pair who effortlessly aced the tricky high notes in the Laughing Song. While action-packed, this lengthy middle act could have done with a nip and tuck. But it set things up for the denouement where Falke, dressed as batman, reveals his revenge prank on Malmberg. In the pit conductor Alfred Eschwé expertly steered the orchestra through this musical melange with the distinctive pulse of Strauss’s waltz rhythms always at the opera’s heart. 

BNO has discovered the secret to creating operas that are relevant not only to today’s world but more importantly their local audience, many of whom arrived dressed in pink.