Theatre
The theatre in Denmark continues to thrive thanks to the many theatres in Copenhagen and across the country which put on a wide variety of Danish and foreign performances. The flagship Royal Danish Theatre presents drama, opera, ballet and music. Since the 18th century, Danish playwrights have been successful in attracting wide public interest.
Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754) is considered by many to be the founder of the Danish theatre. Satirical comedies such as Jean de France and Jeppe of the Hill are still performed today.
Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850) introduced romanticism to the Danish theatre. Especially successful was his Earl Hakon the Mighty, premiered in 1808.
The Norwegian Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) also travelled to Copenhagen where he produced numerous plays such as A Doll’s House (1879).
In recent years, there has been something of a revival in Danish theatre. Many new playwrights and producers have appeared including Astrid Saalbach (b.1955), winner of the Nordic Drama Award in 2004, and Peter Asmussen (b.1957), who wrote the film script for Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves. Danish musicals have also been a particularly successful feature of the modern theatre. Knud Christensen, commonly known as Sebastian, was particularly successful with Cyrano (1992), based on Rostand’s play and Klokkeren fra Notre Dame (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) (2001). Bent Fabricius-Bjerre's musical Matador (2007) is based on a successful TV series of the same name.
Another popular Danish theatrical tradition is the revue which has been thriving since the mid 19th century. Today revues are performed every summer to full houses in theatres across Denmark, poking fun at the politics of the day and even the monarchy. Among the most popular are Circusrevyen in Copenhagen with Lisbet Dahl, and the Nykøbing Revy directed by Flemming Krøll in Nykøbing Falster.
Finally, Danish television has also contributed to drama with a number of successful series since the 1970s. Perhaps the most notable successes have been the two series of Forbrydelsen (The Killing), both of which attracted over 30% audience share in Denmark when broadcast and have been widely sold around the world.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Denmark, Performing Arts
Famous quotes containing the word theatre:
“Art is for [the Irish] inseparable from artifice: of that, the theatre is the home. Possibly, it was England made me a novelist.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“... in the happy laughter of a theatre audience one can get the most immediate and numerically impressive guarantee that there is nothing in one’s mind which is not familiar to the mass of persons living at the time.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)