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Christmas Eve. Staff are just finishing trimming the splendid Christmas tree at the Ekdahl family home in Sweden. The Ekdahls run the local theatre and the young Fanny and Alexander also seem to have been born for the stage. The living room soon fills with the sound of laughter and clinking glasses as well as delicious smells. In the early hours, as the hubbub subsides to naughty giggles and the inebriated guests crawl under the covers (with or without their own partners), the children dream at the spectacle of their magic lantern. Nothing suggests that all warmth will soon disappear from their lives when their father Oscar dies unexpectedly and their mother Emilie soon gets married again, this time to the authoritarian bishop Edvard Vergérus. He is keen to discipline the children and rid Alexander of his vivid fantasies, harshly if necessary …
This winter, Ingmar Bergman’s semi-autobiographical film Fanny och Alexander (1982) will come to life on the opera stage, in a creation by composer Mikael Karlsson and librettist Royce Vavrek. A grandiose family chronicle demands grandiose means. For her debut at La Monnaie, conductor Ariane Matiakh will turn her attention to a score that combines the acoustic sound of a symphony orchestra with ingenious surround electronics, commanding a cast of fourteen soloists, among whom none other than Thomas Hampson and Anne Sofie von Otter. Director Ivo van Hove, who is intimately familiar with Bergman’s work, will dig deep into the soul of his characters and, together with scenographer Jan Versweyveld, will create scenes that gradually unfold into a spectral hall of mirrors. A fantasy world that stubbornly goes against harsh reality – and may ultimately overcome it.
Are you under 30? Then attend this opera on the Young Opera Night (13.12.2024) and we treat you to a personal welcome, a free drink, a free programme book and an after-event.