Festive concert
with the new
music director!

It was a proud and long-awaited moment when we appointed Edward Gardner as music director, a position he will assume in 2024. We are cutting down the waiting time with this festive concert – where the National Opera Orchestra and soloist Amalie Stalheim can be experienced under the direction of Gardner himself.  

The evening’s programme is packed with passion for the art form and plenty of ambition: Dvořák’s popular Cello Concerto in H Minor and Rachmaninoff's demanding Symphonic Dances will be performed on the Main Stage! 

Anything but ordinary 

“There is a freshness in the way music drama is created here that I would like us to pursue in every performance. Each time the audience arrives at the Opera, they should encounter something extraordinary,” said Gardner on being appointed music director.   

Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is therefore the perfect choice, being among the most beautiful ever written for the cello and orchestra. The concert is near to the heart of Amalie Stalheim, who will be taking the lead with her 335-year-old cello during the performance. Amalie Stalheim also give her own chamber concert this season.

As violent as it is beautiful  

From Dvořák’s caramel to Rachmaninoff’s bitter pill, Symphonic Dances from 1940 is the composer’s greatest and most modern orchestral work – and also his last.  

The work was tightly interlocked with his turbulent life, especially his escape from Russia 22 years earlier. It is full of longing for both Russia and a world lost to the First – and soon to be Second – World War. The three dances, ‘Noon’, ‘Twilight’ and ‘Midnight’, warn of death, war and destruction – as the path from unity to collapse is but a short one.