Asle and Alida

Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature, Jon Fosse needs little introduction in the Norway where he was born and made his career - which started with studies at the university in Bergen, the city he now calls home. Fosse is Norway’s most respected literary figure, whose 2014 work Trilogy is a set of three novellas which poignantly evoke the haunting and mysterious love between Bergen residents Asle and Alida.

Danish composer Bent Sørensen, laureate of the so-called Nobel Prize for Composition, the Grawemeyer Award, writes haunting, beautiful music that has been described as being ‘constantly pulled between the magnetic poles of warm, Romantic tonality and rich atonality.’

The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Bergen National Opera are proud to present Asle og Alida, a major new opera in which Sørensen’s score sets Fosse’s libretto, and the Nordic region’s most significant operatic premiere since the turn of the decade.