Organization

Conductor

Christian Karlsen

Singer

Elisabeth Meyer

Soprano

soloist

NorrlandsOperan

Orchestra

Norrlandsoperans Symfoniorkester

Karolinas sömn

Umeå

Sweden

Karolinas sömn Eliasson

Public

Approved

A concert chamber opera
When Karolina Olsson from Oknö woke up one morning in 1908, she had slept well - not for one night, but for 32 years. Now she would soon turn 47 years old and felt refreshed and well. What had happened? What external cause had brought her into such an exceptional state?

At Christmas 1875, when she was 14 years old, she was out on the ice and had a toothache. She went home, lay down and fell into a 32-year-old sleep. How can one understand or explain the long-term exclusion from everyday life? Would the toothache be the only cause? Was she in fact a simulator - if so why? She must have had some kind of consciousness, during all these years. What did she experience where she lay? How did the next of kin - the mother - look at her? What did she know about how her daughter experienced her childhood - was there anything she had reason to try to hide? An indescribable betrayal? A mental crisis?

Shape sleep in an opera?
The idea for the project comes from soprano Lena Hoel, who first heard about Karolina's sleep when she saw an exhibition with glass artist Bertil Vallien's man-high glass sculptures. Vallien had read about Karolina in an old newspaper article and created the "enclosed" figures. The story of the young woman was easy to associate with the world of stagnant, frozen glass. Would it be possible to portray Karolina's long sleep in an opera?

With Vallien's glass art as a scenographic starting point, Lena turned to the composer Anders Eliasson and the author Bengt Emil Johnson in the belief that they could give words and tone to the two people who act in the room of glass: the mother and the daughter.

Conductor Christian Karlsen
Christian Karlsen, one of Europe's leading conductors, has worked with most of the world's foremost contemporary composers, including Polar Prize winners Steve Reich, Kaija Saariaho and Sofia Gubajdulina. In 2015-2017 he was artistic director of the Dutch festival Dag in de Branding and in 2008-2014 he was artistic director of the New European Ensemble. In 2018, together with pianist David Huang, he founded the festival Gränslandet Symfonisk Fest at Trädgården in Stockholm.

English

Karolinas sömn by Eliasson, A., De (2022/2022), Director musical Christian Karlsen, NorrlandsOperan, Umeå, Sweden

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