Brothers

5 things to know about Brothers

1° From screen to stage

While many operas are based on books or plays, Brothers is based on a film, Brødre, a psychological thriller directed by Susanne Bier. Released in 2004, it tells the story of a Danish officer who is sent to the International Security Assistance Force operation in Afghanistan, and of how it affects his family back home. The film won the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was later remade as an American production starring Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman.

2° Defining the undefinable

To celebrate Aarhus as the 2017 European Capital of Culture, the city’s Musikhuset commissioned an opera, a dance and a musical, each based on a different film by Bier. Produced in cooperation with the Danish National Opera and Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, Brothers was the first of these adaptations. Icelandic conductor, curator and composer Daníel Bjarnason was asked to create the new work. Time Out New York has described his music as ‘coming eerily close to defining classical music’s undefinable brave new world,’ while his versatility has also led to collaborations with a broad array of musicians outside the classical field including Sigur Rós, Ben Frost and Brian Eno.

3° Collective memory

Changing one art form into another can easily fail, so while Daníel Bjarnason and his Swedish librettist Kerstin Perski wanted to depict the same story on stage as that of the film, they decided not to compulsively follow its narrative structure. Their solution was to borrow a feature from ancient theatre - a Greek chorus that comments on the events that happen on stage. But as the trauma of his deployment in Afghanistan and his difficulty in readjusting to life back home causes Michael, the Danish army officer, ever more stress, this chorus starts to trigger painful memories for him before it eventually morphs into voices trapped inside his head.

4° Odysseus reborn

This chorus isn’t the only part of the opera that harkens back to Ancient Greece; Bjarnson sees a strong parallel between Michael and Odysseus, whose return to Ithaca after the Trojan War left him feeling equally lost and unable to adjust. ‘He finds that his world has moved on and he’s become somewhat of a ghost,’ the composer says of the hero in Homer’s Odyssey. ‘What drew me to Brothers is that it’s such a universal story. There’s something timeless about its core. It’s rooted in mythology.’

5° Nordic blanc

Brothers was a popular and critical success in Aarhus, with Jutland Station giving particular praise to the director, Denmark’s Kasper Holten: ‘The curtains opened to a completely white stage [reminiscent] of a classic white mausoleum, sober and minimalist... Kasper Holten’s take on Susanne Bier’s psychological drama is a compelling adaptation. Expect high drama and moments of happiness, but mostly sadness and hard-hitting scenes.’ These scenes have now made their way to Icelandic Opera, who perform them at Harpa. The jewel in Reykjavik's crown, the steel and glass structure of this magnificent concert hall was inspired by the basalt sea stacks that dot Iceland’s coastline, and is every bit as dramatic as Bjarnason’s opera.