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World's First "Heavy Metal Opera" Premieres in Norway
March 10, 2005
Billed as the world's first "heavy metal opera," Faust — Metal Opera will open on Friday at Norway's Kristiansund Opera, reports iafrica.com. Local metal band Pica Fierce has taken Gounod's music and "paraphrased it," according to Kristiansund opera chief Jan Karstensen, who further describes the work as a "melting together of genres like no one's ever seen before." Pica Fierce, composed of four members, will perform with fifteen classical musicians from the Kirstiansund Opera's Sinfonietta.
Oeystein Haltbakk, a member of the band, describes how he fell into the opera world. After completing his civil military service at Kristiansund, a small coastal town in Norway where there is a burgeoning metal scene, Haltbakk talked to a former opera chief who had become fascinated by heavy metal. The two eventually conceived the idea of putting on a heavy metal opera.
Karstensen points out the adaptability of the opera Faust to metal, with the genre's characteristics of heavy makeup and frightening sounds. He comments, "The existential problems are the same today as they were 300 years ago, so we are trying to communicate these age-old questions to young people by taking the story out of its original setting and making it take place today."
More information can be found at iafrica.com.
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