Height­ened Dra­ma: Inside the oper­at­ic adap­ta­tion of Festen

“You can’t have any music,” said Thomas Vin­ter­berg in a 2015 inter­view about his 1998 film Fes­ten, cre­at­ed using the Dogme 95 man­i­festo. ​“I invent­ed that rule. That was the most fear­ful thing for me to do, to cut away music.” That film, punc­tu­at­ed by unpleas­ant silences with no audi­to­ry accom­pa­ni­ment to save us, is now an opera.

Festen’s world pre­mière took place at London’s Roy­al Opera House in Feb­ru­ary 2025. Its music is com­posed by Mark-Antho­ny Tur­nage, a sto­ried com­pos­er of con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal, with libret­to penned by Lee Hall, an acclaimed writer and lyri­cist who pre­vi­ous­ly adapt­ed his Bil­ly Elliot screen­play into a musi­cal. Direct­ing is Richard Jones, respon­si­ble for some of the most vision­ary and divi­sive stag­ings of the­atre and opera in recent years (includ­ing the Olivi­er-win­ning Hansel and Gre­tel in 2008, and the more con­tro­ver­sial RSC’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream in 2002). A cham­ber piece set across mul­ti­ple rooms of a grand hotel, Vinterberg’s cult film has found itself ripe for adap­ta­tion, birthing six dif­fer­ent stage plays inter­na­tion­al­ly since 2004 – but opera is a marked­ly dif­fer­ent beast from tra­di­tion­al the­atre, ele­vat­ed, max­i­mal­ist, and bring­ing its own set of tropes and expectations.

Vinterberg’s film was the first made under the strict, self-decreed con­di­tions of Dogme 95. A new cin­e­mat­ic rule­book in the tra­di­tion of Fran­cois Truffaut’s sem­i­nal Cahiers du Cin­e­ma essay ​‘A Cer­tain Ten­den­cy of the French Cin­e­ma’, Dogme 95 and its accom­pa­ny­ing ​‘Vow of Chasti­ty’ were drawn up by Vin­ter­berg and co-con­spir­a­tor Lars von Tri­er and dis­trib­uted to the pub­lic in March of 1995. Part tongue-in-cheek provo­ca­tion, part sin­cere exper­i­ment, the core aim of Dogme was to strip cin­e­ma back to its purest com­po­nents, eschew­ing sets and non-diegetic sound in favour of a focus on nar­ra­tive and imme­di­a­cy to bring us clos­er to raw per­for­mances and emo­tion­al truth.

Fes­ten (in Eng­lish: ​‘The Cel­e­bra­tion’) chron­i­cles the 60^th birth­day cel­e­bra­tions of Helge, esteemed patri­arch and suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man. A swarm of guests – includ­ing Helge’s three sur­viv­ing chil­dren, Chris­t­ian, Helene, and Michael – gath­er at the fam­i­ly-owned hotel for an elab­o­rate din­ner. Chris­t­ian, the eldest son (played in Vinterberg’s film by Ulrich Thom­sen and in Jones’ pro­duc­tion by tenor Allan Clay­ton) lurks unhap­pi­ly at the side­lines of the fes­tiv­i­ties but takes cen­tre stage when the toasts begin. He is the dis­rup­tive span­ner in the works, reveal­ing, in the very first speech of the night, that his father sex­u­al­ly abused him and his late sis­ter Lin­da when they were chil­dren. The abuse drove Lin­da to die by sui­cide, one year before the sto­ry takes place.

This rev­e­la­tion is upset­ting and dis­com­fit­ing enough in words alone, but it’s height­ened through form. In Vinterberg’s film, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Antho­ny Dodd-Man­tle cap­tures Christian’s pained face (and the com­pa­ra­bly sto­ic faces of the onlook­ers) in claus­tro­pho­bic close-up. The Dogme manifesto’s insis­tence on hand­held cin­e­matog­ra­phy ren­ders these fram­ings unavoid­ably shaky, desta­bilised, as we hone in on the family’s cracks, tics, and tells. The vast­ness of the Roy­al Opera House’s audi­to­ri­um forces a dif­fer­ent visu­al approach. ​“We’re on a big stage, so every­thing has to be big­ger.” says Natalya Romaniw, who plays Helene. ​“If we tried to be as inti­mate with our actions and our respons­es, then it wouldn’t read in a big house”. The exag­ger­at­ed ges­tures of the per­form­ers are sim­i­lar­ly desta­bil­is­ing of the reserved deco­rum the din­ner par­ty demands, bring­ing these bit­ing­ly raw words to life with a phys­i­cal­i­ty impas­sioned enough to cap­ture them.

The speech­es them­selves are a nat­ur­al match with the gram­mar of opera, Hall’s ele­gant adap­ta­tion – faith­ful yet eco­nom­i­cal – trans­form­ing the toasts into arias for each per­former. Less expect­ed is the trans­pos­ing of the elon­gat­ed silences that fol­low these speech­es to a form that nor­mal­ly eschews them. Music or singing is a near-con­stant in opera, and dead air is unex­pect­ed and arrest­ing, height­en­ing the impact of the blunt rev­e­la­tions. ​“I sup­pose the Dogme man­i­festo is some­thing akin to the Veris­mo move­ment in opera,” explains Hall. ​“Although it was not didac­tic in the way that the ​‘Vow of Chasti­ty’ was, to address sex, romance, and vio­lence plain­ly was the point. Veris­mo result­ed in all of the tropes we most asso­ciate with the height­ened world of opera”.

Opera, much like Dogme, car­ries with it a set of fun­da­men­tal traits. Whilst there are no strict rules writ­ten out in a man­i­festo form, most of what is uttered in opera works must be sung. Dogme is cin­e­ma stripped back to its essen­tials, but opera, on the oth­er hand, is the­atre that is ​“every­thing”, says Richard Jones, direc­tor of the Roy­al Opera House’s adap­ta­tion. It con­tains act­ing, singing, an orches­tra, lav­ish set design, and a stag­ger­ing num­ber of on-stage cre­atives. Despite this max­i­mal­ism, there is a sim­i­lar abo­li­tion of extradiegetic ele­ments. Per­form­ers sing with­out micro­phones, and all music is per­formed live, nev­er from a record­ing. Whilst a far cry from the low-bud­get of its source mate­r­i­al, the opera adap­ta­tion shares a cer­tain scrap­pi­ness and imme­di­a­cy – Tur­nage admits hav­ing writ­ten Festen’s music extreme­ly quickly.

Opera is an art form itself renowned for dis­rup­tion and rein­ven­tion: Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle, for instance, broke with tra­di­tion­al form and now stands as one of opera’s most cel­e­brat­ed works. Lars von Tri­er once attempt­ed to stage it, but ulti­mate­ly con­ced­ed that it exceed­ed his pow­ers. By design and by cir­cum­stance, the opera ren­di­tion of Fes­ten takes a more Brecht­ian approach to its stag­ing and its rela­tion­ship to its audi­ence than its film fore­bear, and the results are mod­ern and confrontational.

Both the opera and film ver­sions of Fes­ten takes place in a sin­gle loca­tion, but split across mul­ti­ple rooms. The major­i­ty of the 100-minute work sees the din­ner table take cen­tre stage, stretch­ing from one end to the oth­er: Helge on one side, oppo­site him, Chris­t­ian. It’s remark­able how sim­i­lar the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing the opera is to watch­ing Vinterberg’s film, our gazes dart­ing from per­former to per­former to probe their faces for reac­tion, pro­pelled by voice, block­ing, and the com­par­a­tive still­ness that sur­rounds the focused action. When the par­ty splits off, three sep­a­rate rooms are delin­eat­ed by the pres­ence of a bed, a bath­tub, and anoth­er bed respec­tive­ly, in equal­ly-sized sec­tions of the stage. When a new scene begins, the action does not pause in the pre­vi­ous one.

“It’s very filmic,” reflects Clay­ton. ​“Richard had to use a lot of clever light­ing cues, and to be explic­it­ly detailed with us as a cast”. This split approach to stag­ing where no set divides the rooms is the­mat­i­cal­ly strik­ing, and calls to mind von Trier’s Dogville, osten­si­bly a piece of filmed the­atre on a sound­stage, with only white tape used to delin­eate rooms and hous­es. In Dogville, Grace (played by Nicole Kid­man) is raped by Stel­lan Skarsgård’s ini­tial­ly kind­ly Chuck whilst a town meet­ing takes place just feet away. The assault takes place in plain view of the towns­folk on an extra-diegetic lev­el, and Jones’ approach in Fes­ten is sim­i­lar­ly res­o­nant. Helge is set upon by Michael while the danc­ing con­tin­ues in the adja­cent room; Michael and his wife have sex whilst Helene dis­cov­ers Linda’s sui­cide note. As pri­vate scenes unfold, the bath­tub in which Lin­da drowned her­self occu­pies the same space, a spec­tre of the past that con­tin­ues to impact her sur­viv­ing siblings.

Fes­ten is Brecht­ian in oth­er respects, its revealed truths res­onat­ing beyond the stage itself. It is unde­ni­able and inescapable that opera is still a strand of the­atre pri­mar­i­ly enjoyed by the priv­i­leged upper class­es. To their cred­it, the Roy­al Opera House has been work­ing to attract new audi­ences to Fes­ten and oth­er mod­ern works through dis­count­ed tick­ets and youth schemes, but these changes weren’t evi­dent on press night. Sit­ting in the Roy­al Opera House’s audi­to­ri­um as some­one not of that monied back­ground makes for an win­ning­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ence. Most in atten­dance could plau­si­bly be char­ac­ters in Fes­ten themselves.

Vinterberg’s film hinges on a trap being sprung – both on the guests at Helge’s din­ner par­ty, and the spec­ta­tor. When we speak short­ly after press night, Romaniw tells me that heck­ling is com­mon at the Roy­al Opera House, espe­cial­ly when audi­ences are met with atyp­i­cal, con­fronta­tion­al pro­duc­tions that diverge from tra­di­tion­al opera form and con­tent. No such thing has yet hap­pened with Fes­ten – per­haps because the guests with­in the piece do so on the audience’s behalf.

In a dar­ing gam­bit, Tur­nage and Hall have ven­omous­ly altered the film’s end­ing to what Hall terms a ​‘col­lec­tive denial’, a new and uncom­pro­mis­ing dénoue­ment more evoca­tive of the less-for­giv­ing von Tri­er. In Vinterberg’s film, Helge admits his wrong­do­ing and accepts defeat, leav­ing the table as his fam­i­ly warm­ly greet Chris­t­ian the next morn­ing. In the opera, these apolo­gies are dis­pensed with. Helge’s guests wish Chris­t­ian a polite good morn­ing as they encounter him in the lob­by, but they walk on past and out of sight until only the accus­ing son remains. The cur­tain falls where it rose, Chris­t­ian alone with his pleas unheard. When the lights come up, the well-dressed and high-class in the audi­ence stand too. They brush them­selves down, and they leave, their hearty con­ver­sa­tion shift­ing to oth­er mat­ters. The par­ty is over, but in a new form, Fes­ten leaves behind illu­mi­nat­ing reflections.