150th Anniversary of the Premiere of Ibsen's Peer Gynt with Grieg's Music

Name: 150th Anniversary of the Premiere of Ibsen's Peer Gynt with Grieg's Music
Start: 2026-02-24T19:00:00-06:00
End: 2026-02-24T21:00:00-06:00
Location: MetroNOME Brewery

Schedule

Tue Feb 24 2026 at 07:00 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

MetroNOME Brewery | St Paul, MN

On February 24, 1876, Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, accompanied by Edvard Grieg's incidental music, premiered at the Christiania Theater in Oslo, Norway. The play was published in 1867, and became very popular as a literary work in Norway, but it was not performed as a play until Ibsen and Grieg collaborated to put the music and words together on stage in 1876.
This play and music combined to be something even more than the sum of their parts that has inspired, confronted, and entertained audiences around the world for 150 years. Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites remain some of the most popular and beloved classical music of all time, but there are many gems he composed for the incidental music that are less familiar to modern audiences.
Pianist Sonja Thompson and dramaturg Jon Cranney have adapted a "readers theater" program condensing the play to its essentials of plot and music that Sonja will perform with a small cast of singers and actors in under two hours.
The cast consists of:
Justin Spenner, baritone (Peer Gynt)
Kathryn Rupp, soprano (Solveig)
Maggie Burr, soprano
Robin Helgen , mezzo soprano
Thore Dosdall, tenor
David Fillman, baritone
Sonja Thompson, piano
Presented in the Fingal's Cave performing space at MetroNOME Brewery. $15 admission. Limited seating.
Supported in part by a grant from Sons of Norway Foundation.