FESTEN Comes to Finnish National Opera in 2026

The international opera sensation Festen invites audiences to a party after which nothing will ever be the same again. A creative team has transformed Oscar-winning director Thomas Vinterberg's cult film into a powerful opera. Festen premiered at the Royal Opera House in London in 2025. It arrives at the Finnish National Opera on 27 March.  Performances run 9 April–7 May 2026.

Wealthy hotel owner Helge gathers his friends and family to celebrate his 60th birthday. Among the guests are his wife Else and their three adult children: Christian, Michael and Helena. On the night of the celebration, Christian delivers a speech that exposes a dark family secret. 

Celebrated contemporary composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Lee Hall joined forces with director Richard Jones to transform Thomas Vinterberg's Oscar-winning 1998 cult film into a powerful opera, which premiered to critical acclaim at the Royal Opera House in London in February 2025. 

Thomas Vinterberg's Festen was the first film to embody the Dogme 95 filmmaking style, which emphasised realism, simplicity and raw storytelling. Vinterberg co-wrote the Dogme 95 manifesto with his colleague Lars von Trier, setting out strict rules to promote realist cinematic art, real-time storytelling and a minimalist performance style. Special effects and elaborate technology were banned, and filming had to take place in authentic settings using handheld cameras. This radical approach to filmmaking has influenced countless creators in theatre. Festen has been adapted for the stage multiple times, with productions reaching London's West End and Broadway. 

Both the composer Turnage and the librettist Hall felt the film was ideal material for an opera. “The main action is in one room, you've got the party guests – a chorus – on stage all the time and then, of course, the speeches at the dinner are arias!” Turnage enthused. 

“The film has a sort of heightened reality; although the Dogme style makes it look like a documentary, with the hand-held camera it's actually hugely wrought as a piece of drama. From a screenwriting point of view, it's a perfectly stuctured screenplay. It's a beautiful thing to take to another form, such as opera.”

Hall found the script perfect, too. “Everything happens at the right time, and even the minor characters all have their own little journeys.” He saw the potential of opera to bring out the richness of the storytelling in Festen, as well as to expand its expressive range by amplifying, deepening and sometimes even contradicting the action. “You can add extra layers in opera, and you can play with the audience's expectations of musical forms which provoke them or lull them into a false sense of security and then shock them. Or you can be seeing something dreadful on stage but there's something about what the orchestra is doing against that which makes it much richer.” 

The opera adaptation of Festen is a shattering experience. Unlike the film, it abounds with satire and black humour. Turnage's bold score blends opera with unexpected influences, including jazz. The lyrical, sometimes even light-hearted music intertwines with the dark story in an almost absurd way.

The role of Helge, the hotel owner and father of the family, is sung by bass-baritone Darren Jeffery. The mother, Else, is sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley, who performed the role of the Grandmother in the London premiere. The couple's three children, Christian, Michael and Helena, are sung by tenor Daniel Brenna, baritone John Chest and soprano Natalya Romaniw, who also performed the role in London. Michael's wife Mette is sung by soprano Georgia Jarman. The Grandmother and Grandfather are sung by soprano Kirsi Tiihonen and bass-baritone Robert Bork. Alongside the central family, the production features a large cast of soloists from Finland and abroad. The Finnish National Opera's orchestra is conducted by James Hendry.  

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