a national performing arts archive
Galleries
All galleriesNorway’s Musical Drama Heritage(478)
The history of musical drama in Norway is complex and unclear. The Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, first housed at Folketeatret, gave its first performances there in 1958. In 2008 the institution moved to the Oslo Opera House in Bjørvika. Before this, modest economical conditions and short-term initiatives characterised and hindered the development of musical drama in Norway. There has also been little focus on coordinating archives and documentation.
The Society for Norwegian Musical Drama Heritage (FNMA) was founded in 2021 in order to create an overview of the country’s history of musical drama in the form of a digital compendium, work that was made possible when Sceneweb invited FNMA to collaborate. The contents of FNMA’s database primarily comprise articles by historian Trond Olav Scendsen on works, composers and librettists. Our intention is to continue this work and to create a website that is under continual development by FNMA.
Pictured right: Hege Høisæter as Ameli in the opera Fram (2023) by Synne Skouen and Oda Radoor. Photo © Erik Berg.