Sweden Anders Wängdahl’s The Secret of the Factory (Fabrikens hemlighet): Gothenburg Opera Soloists and Youth Choir / Sergej Bolkhovets (conductor). Gothenburg Opera main stage, 12.12.2024. (NS)
As is traditional in December the Gothenburg Opera offers a family-friendly Christmas musical, this year an entirely new production. Anders Wängdahl has written a charming story around a school class singing for Saint Lucy’s Day (observed on 13 December) who get drawn into a mysterious factory and help solve a Christmas crisis. The atmospheric set and imaginative costumes work well in drawing the audience in to the story.
The music has been selected from a variety of sources – Handel, Offenbach and Dvořák to name but three – but a particularly nice touch is a focus on Swedish Christmas songs. This together with the lyrics of the Narrator’s opening song poking gentle fun at the Gothenburg Opera’s hometown (or rather its weather) gives this musical a welcoming local flavour. The book also has some fun humour reflecting the challenges of teenagers making themselves understood to adults.
Åke Zetterström ably shifted between his role as Narrator and his other persona of factory guard Kempe, a soldierly figure who could have stepped straight out of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker (indeed his first song was to the tune of the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’). He was delightful in the ensembles, most of all when he and his fellow workers at Santa’s Workshop assure the frightened children that their colleague Hjördis the dragon (!) is perfectly harmless, to the music of the ‘padlock quintet’ from Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Mia Karlsson had great comic acting as Selene the dreamcatcher but also showed off her lovely lyric soprano both in ensembles and in a stunning solo set to Dvořák’s ‘Song to the moon’ from Rusalka. Katarina Giotas’s character Heiphastina the Rhymesmith was a clear contrast to the rather New Age Selene, being a bluff no-nonsense character with a powerful mezzo-soprano. Her opening solo (to the tune of ‘Orlofsky’s couplet’ from Die Fledermaus) was vocally flamboyant and visually impressive as well. The word flamboyant also applies to the inventor Heron (Daniel Ralphsson), whose steampunk costume and complicated vocabulary made for great comedy material which Ralphsson delivered with aplomb.
The workers at Santa’s Workshop are facing a crisis because there is not enough Christmas spirit and hope to summon Santa Claus to his factory, so they turn to calling in a Lucia procession. The Gothenburg Opera Youth Choir displayed lovely harmony in their a cappella renditions of ‘När det lider mot jul’ and ‘Luciasången’, as well as impressive footwork in Sara Suneson’s ambitious and beautiful choreography. Members of the chorus are important in driving the plot and finding a solution to the Christmas spirit problem: ‘Christmas is made together’.
The scene where the chorus performed a potpourri of Swedish Christmas songs (in fun and sometimes daring arrangement by Per Larsson) was a tour de force both vocally and scenically and at its end children in the audience were celebrating the imminent arrival of Santa Claus. On stage the arrival of Santa (Kristian Lindroos) was celebrated by a brilliant ensemble to the tune of the ‘Hallelujah chorus’ followed by a moving rendition of ‘O holy night’ by Lindroos’s sonorous bass-baritone. All in all, this production is a heartwarming early Christmas present from our local opera.
Niklas Smith
Playing until 22 December. For more information and tickets see the Gothenburg Opera website here.
Production:
Lyrics and Book – Anders Wängdahl
Musical arrangement – Per Larsson
Director – Mattias Ermedahl
Set, Makeup and Costume design – Axel Boberg Ragnerstam
Choreography – Sara Suneson
Lighting design – Niklas Elfvengren
Video design – Ludvig Falk
Sound design – Jonathan Assarsson
Chorus master – Martin Nagashima Toft
Cast:
Narrator / Guardsman Kempe – Åke Zetterström
Dreamcatcher Selene – Mia Karlsson
Rhymesmith Heiphastina – Katarina Giotas
Inventor Heron – Daniel Ralphsson
Santa Claus – Kristian Lindroos
Hjördis – Petter Eriksson and Kristoffer Lindroos
Lucia – Angelica Halldorf
Wilma – Beda Odlöw Nyberg
Max – Darius Manzoor
Harry – Emanuel Lyche
Lisa – Molly Malmstedt
Aron – Arvid Hessle