Peer grows up in Norway, in a mountain world full of legends about trolls and mythical creatures. A wild nature that invites dreaming and one never quite knows whether the presented episodes of his life are actually true events. The son of the once respected farmer Jont Gynt, who has lost his possessions through his own fault, shows a great talent for impressing others with wordy speeches and transforming his often modest reality with glorious inventions into something grandiose. The theatrical version by Henrik Ibsen shows quite mercilessly how this rogue stumbles through life, which brings him fantastic adventures in America and Africa, but also lets him suffer shipwreck and finally leads him back to his homeland as a failed old man. Edvard Grieg composed stage music for the theatrical version, from which he finally compiled the two suites that as music take us above all into the mood worlds. This welcomes us with a romantic morning mood that leads from the long polar night into a single great day that stands for the life of our hero. At the threshold of adulthood, he must say goodbye to his dying mother and almost simultaneously discovers the great love of his life: Solvejg. But he must flee before he can even reap his happiness. He has already caused too much trouble, has been declared an outlaw and so he seeks the distance – around the outside; wait, Solvejg, you must wait. And so Solvejg waits a lifetime for her Peer, is always with him in her thoughts and carries him in her heart. This very thing saves him, who always wanted to be true to himself and thus become emperor. Mercilessly he describes himself at the end as an onion, only outer shells, without a core. But his homeland he finds literally at the last moment in Solvejg. That was the solution to the riddle of the question about the place of his self. And Solvejg? You made my life a single song, with this she greets him and at the same time concludes the last chapter of his wonderful adventure life.
The orchestra of the Festspielhaus Erl takes us with the music into the great feelings of the story, the actors of the Mozarteum University Salzburg tell the adventures of Peer with quotes from the theatrical version as well as with questions and comments from today's perspective. In this interplay, a new view of the old story emerged for the Festspielhaus audience in Erl.

Elisabeth Gutjahr

Info & Tickets for the concert can be found HERE.