The baroque
opera Ernelinde

Grand opera with hundreds on stage

Ernelinde is a musical turning point in French opera from the second half of the 18th century. The costumes and scenery were some of the most extravagant things anyone had seen. The performance in the opera in Versailles must have involved four hundred soldiers on horseback, smoke, flames and large-scale war scenes.

The beautiful and dramatic music was written to match this spectacular performance of the very rare. The music was celebrated as masterful, magnificent and ravishing. This highly dramatic opera is set in Norway – of all places.

The basis of the modern opera

The composer Philidor was already praised in his youth by Händel, among others, for his masterful choral movements. But the work was ahead of its time when it was premiered in 1767. Six years later, Gluck was to take credit for the birth of modern opera in Paris, and Ernelinde eventually fell into oblivion.

The exotic Nordic region

The synopsis in Ernelinde offers a violent drama. It takes place in Norway, in Nidaros, Trondheim. The Norwegian king Rodoald is besieged in Nidaros by the evil Swedish ruler, Ricimir, who has formed an alliance with the Danish king Sandomir. However, things come to a head when it turns out that Sandomir's heart belongs to the Norwegian princess, Ernelinde. She experiences the nightmare of her life when she has to choose who will die, her beloved or her own father.

That the opera takes place in Norway is no coincidence. When Ernelinde was composed, there was great interest in the Nordic countries in Paris. A few years earlier, daring scientific expeditions were carried out to the North – and Peru – to determine the shape of the Earth (was the Earth shaped like a lemon or a tangerine?). The exotic and distant Nordic region captivated and fascinated. It is in the middle of this Nordic euphoria that Ernelinde is chosen as the story for a huge venture at the Paris Opera, which, in addition to Nordic soldiers in large numbers, offered flocks of dancing Icelanders, Sami, Cossacks and Tartars.

Orkester Nord with French baroque opera

Ernelinde is staged here for the first time in its entirety in modern times. The production is under the auspices of the Norwegian orchestra Orkester Nord, which is known for exploring and presenting the repertoire from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in new ways, in collaboration with the French center for baroque opera, the Center de Musique Baroque de Versailles. The soloists all have backgrounds from the biggest opera stages in Paris and have distinguished themselves as some of the leading voices from French baroque opera and classical repertoire.