Bergen arts avoid being overshadowed
BERGEN, NORWAY— An ideal city for an arts festival? Toronto, maybe no. Bergen, Norway, maybe yes.
Wait a minute. What about Luminato? What about Toronto Summer Music? True, Ontario’s capital isn’t the cultural desert it used to be whenever the thermometer began to smile.
But like New York, it is a big city. And it is in small cities, from Salzburg to Savannah, that arts festivals are less likely to be swallowed up by the community’s ongoing cultural life.
And that is certainly true of Bergen, an old city (founded in 1070) with a population of fewer than 300,000 and once the home of Norway’s greatest composer, Edvard Grieg.
This year, after an absence of more than a quarter-century, I accepted an invitation to revisit the Bergen International Festival and was once again struck by the way this worldclass event virtually turns a picturesque port into a two-week party.
King Harald himself attended the open-air official opening in Torgallmenningen City Square, where Queen Sonja delivered the opening address. To be with them in Bergen almost felt like becoming an honorary Norwegian.
And yet, although in common with so many successful festivals Bergen’s celebrates its native roots, it reaches out as well to a wider world. In the words of festival director Anders Beyer, “the festival is always in motion and is in critical dialogue with itself as well as its near and distant surroundings.”
Cuba’s Carlos Acosta brought his dance company to the stage of Grieg Hall, which also played host to French acrobatics, a production of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes and a staging of Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Germany’s Berliner Ensemble and the American multimedia artist Robert Wilson, with music by Canada’s Rufus Wainwright.
Other Canadians taking part included Robert Lepage, with his one-man autobiographical 887, and Les 7 Doigts de la Main with a show titled Reversible, combining circus, dance, theatre and acrobatic techniques.
Performances and presentations took place all across the city, including even an exhibition of work by Queen Sonja in Bergen’s impressive Art Museum. And most of them took place within walking distance of each other (another typical feature of ideal festival cities). The notable exception was a series of house concerts in the living rooms of composers Harald Saeverud and Grieg, and the great 19th-century violinist Ole Bull.
Ah, that brings us to the subject of architecture. True festival cities tend to derive much of their magnetism as tourist destinations and Bergen offers tourists a 13th-century tower, a 12th-century church and a Viking banqueting hall among its attractions. Charming wooden houses climb cheek-by-jowl up hillsides and the harbour is guarded by old forts. This is a city with a signature.
It is difficult now to realize that, in the Middle Ages, Bergen was the largest city in Northern Europe as well as the cultural and political capital of Norway. It is at festival time that skepticism gives way to belief. Bergen was named a European Capital of Culture in 2000 and it is home to one of Europe’s oldest symphony orchestras. In other words, a tradition of interest in and support for the arts runs deep. Without such support it would be next to impossible for such a sophisticated and ambitious festival to thrive.
The celebrated Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho was artist in residence this year. The Dutch violinist Janine Jansen brought her Strad. And the London Sinfonietta presented a contemporary program it would subsequently take to London as part of the Nordic Matters festival.
Nordic art matters more culturally than many people on Canada’s side of the Atlantic realize, although several years ago Soundstreams did assemble an illuminating Nordic Festival in Toronto that merits an encore.
And let us not forget — we won’t be able to in a few weeks — that Canada is a Nordic nation. The Idea of North was one of Toronto pianist Glenn Gould’s most famous radio documentaries.
Look at some of the paintings in the Bergen Art Museum and you will find some of the same themes explored on canvas on the walls of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
So to find Canadian artists per- forming alongside their Nordic counterparts in Bergen scarcely merited surprise.
Moreover, they performed as peers and as members of an international community.
That is one of the reasons why festivals are so valuable. They remind us of our interconnectedness. And as Beyer stated in the souvenir program, “the arts field presents us with powerful attempts at depicting differences and diversity as an enriching force.”
It is difficult now to realize that, in the Middle Ages, Bergen was the largest city in Northern Europe as well as the cultural . . . capital of Norway. It is at festival time that skepticism gives way to belief