Håkon Daniel Nystedt's PhD-project is about new relations between stage directing and music in opera. Through workshops and projects, he investigates how elements and traditions from the spoken theatre can be used in an opera setting. The relationship between the conductor and the stage director in opera is central in the investigation.
Håkon Daniel Nystedt (born 1980) studied orchestral conducting in Copenhagen with Giordano Bellincampi, Giancarlo Andretta and Michael Schönwandt. He has been conducting orchestras like the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and many more. He also works as an opera conductor, performing both repertoire and contemporary pieces.
Håkon Nystedt also writes music. He is for the time being doing a PhD-doctorate at the Norwegian Academy of Opera, where he is writing and performing opera, working with music and stage direction in new ways.
In this presentation, the topic will be improvisation.
In November 2022, Håkon Nystedt arranged an opera improvisation workshop together with stage director Sigurd Ziegler, who will also participate at the presentation. The workshop was with students from the Norwegian Opera Academy and the Norwegian Academy of Music. In five short days, the group created an opera through improvisation.
In the musical world, improvisational projects are often synonymous with a flat structure or the exclusion of the role of a musical leader, but we used the traditional roles of conductor and stage director in this workshop. In this way, we made a situation where the artistic leaders of a (short!) opera production were forced to collaborate in new ways. Also, the questions of which parts of a conductor's and a stage director's handicrafts should be used when the performers' freedom should be nourished at the same time as trying to make the process as efficient as possible.
The presentation will consist of a 35 minutes long video of the result of the workshop (the opera), and a conversation with Håkon Nystedt and Sigurd Ziegler about the process.