I Pagliacci
Enjoy the suffering of others (Weekendavisen, 11.8.2017)
“… but on stage ”Pagliacci” can be fascinating when as in Tine Topsøe’s direction evil, lust, escapism and the worn-out life of the street-entertainers come together and everything makes sense.” (Johannes Erichsen)
How do you want your tenor (Politiken 02.08.2017)
“… the performance worked well and the experience encouraging. One saw right away that the audience were quite taken with the short 50-minutes show that Tine Topsøe had put on its feet. (Thomas Michelsen)
“No place in town is too small for a great operatic experince… and it had its very special charm to stand in the sun on Amager as part of many bystanders and witness the veristic everyday drama ”Pagliacci” sung by clever singers in cracking italian assisted of clowns who dared perform wild acrobatic stunts.” (Politiken, 07.08.2017)
Martyriet (The Martyrdom)
Impressive portrait of Kaj Munk in new opera (Jyllands-Posten, 29.01.2017 (Four stars))
“The opera “Martyriet” draws a strong picture of the poet Kaj Munk… A minimalist interior creates a sharp visual frame with Kaj Munk’s writing desk, pulpit and the radio, that sends the gloomy occupation messages into the living room. Masked secondary characters ride Kaj Munk like mares when they stick out their scary faces… ” (Christine Christiansen)
Tell me, what happened? (Information, 03.02.2017)
“Morten Grove Frandsen is a powerful countertenor and a splendid Kaj Munk, Lise is very beautifully and powerfully sung by Liv Oddveig Midtmageli, both helped well by Tine Topsøes direction.” (Camilla Marie Dahlgreen)
Kaj Munk would not run away (Frederiksborg Amtsavis, 30.01.2017 (four stars))
“The opera is thus a recreation of the pastor’s states of mind. With very limited resources, Tine Topsøe as the director has succeeded in creating a dense and beautiful opera performance… “Martyriet” is a work of art that wants to be taken seriously and is carried out in a way that demands respect. The opera is different in so many ways, but makes a strong impression because the task is accomplished with talent. “ (Knud Cornelius)
Powerful chamber opera about Kaj Munk’s martyrdom (Kristeligt Dagblad, 31.01.2017 (five stars))
“It is sometimes amazing how few resources a performance needs. In the course of four days the Royal Theater has treated us to two magnificent and significant opera performances. “Dead Man Walking” on the big stage is a modern “grand opera” – “Martyriet” minimalistic, but equally artistically successful. One must hope that everyone around the theater, including the responsible politicians, understands the importance of opera as an art form. ” (Peter Dürrfeld)
Martyr bordering on megalomania (Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 01.02.2017)
“A just as focused as complicated chamber opera. Kaj Munk appeared as a Peter Grimes figure. Equally lonely, equally visionary, equally unyielding and deadly. ” (Tobias Lund)
The dilemma of the believer (Skånska Dagbladet, 30.01.2017)
“Martyriet is a very interesting opera experience with a fine artistic height and a core issue that is well worth a lot of thought. (Lars-Erik Larsson)
The priest with the martyr mind (Politiken, 30.01.2017 (four stars))
“It’s duality is the great strength of this performance. For although it is a simple performance, it does not provide a simple answer … It becomes a kind of dream vision for Munk, providing space for his reflections as if they were the psychedelic ingredients in the cocktail that forms the real question of the performance. How can we understand Kaj Munk and his choice. (Henrik Friis)
Who should be sacrificed on your altar? ( Berlingske Tidende, 30.01.2017 (Four stars))
“You get all the more moments with highly perceptible feelings and all too relevant and current conflicts. See it, hear it, feel it – and leave Dokøen (The Royal Opera House) with your head full of thoughts. (Søren Schauser)
The Martyrdom (Magasinet KBH, 29.01.2017)
“In a simple and stylish manner this chamber opera shows what was overshadowing/crucial for Kaj Munk: the calling of God and God’s plan with his life. Thereby the performance becomes uncomfortably current and puts the religious exaltations of the present time into perspective … ‘Martyriet’ is simplicity and pure virtues performed captivatingly and unspoiled’ (Bettina Nielsen)
Hansel and Gretel
Ascolta, Oktober 2016 (BB)
“The undersigned and my grandchild witnessed the performance, and here is the 5-year old’s immediate reaction: “Both Hansel and Gretel were successful while the troll was a failure because he was fooled at the end. Hansel was not good at dancing, but it was fun! Hansel and Gretel sang best and the piano was very good, so the play was great.” An opinion his grandfather and the rest of the audience, consisting of many children with parents and grandparents, certainly shared.”
Et Eventyr i Rosenborg Have
Ascolta, Oktober 2015
“Eight singers accompanied by piano and flute and with minimal décor blew in a most beautiful way life into the mixture of the sensitive and the capricious in Weyses music with vocal surplus and well-balanced dramatic acting… A very successful summer’s tale – more of the same kind, please! “
CphCulture.dk
“The charm of youth coupled with pleasant tunes, linguistic cleverness and beautiful costumes contribute to make the basically silly comedy of mistaken identity go down with delight. Director Tine Topsøe cannot be blamed for going too far in her adaption of the play and in the staging one senses the true love of the material. A love that fortunately has an infectious effect on the audience.”
Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor
Überlingen Kleine Oper am See shows “The Merry Wiwes of Windsor” (Südkurier, 23.08.2014)
Überlingen – The Copenhagen director Tine Topsøe added a fair share of local colour.
Bravissimo! Simply delicious, captivating and funny …
The Copenhagen director Tine Topsøe clearly went beyond Mosenthal’s libretto and put original Shakespeare texts into the dialogues making use of their linguistic power. And she spiced the plot with a fair share of local colour, to the amusement of the enthusiastic audience. As a matter of course the story was moved from the English town of Windsor to Überlingen.
Bodensee Secco is gobbled in the Galgenhölzle (Bierstube in Überlingen) and Falstaff is not tipped out of a laundry basket into the Thames, but into the Überlinger Gondelhafen… And matching this Überlinger location the French Galan Dr. Cajus (Hermann Locher) is transfomed into a rich Swiss.
The director Topsøe succeeded in convincingly bringing the characters of the Singspiel to life.
Overall the acting of all the performers was phenomenal. Topsøe put the characters in diffent time-related styles of clothing thus increasing the transparency.
To create an operatic project of this professional quality on a narrow budget requires an inexhaustible idealism of many participants. The huge applause indicated, that the audience felt the same way. Chapeau!
Charming romantic opera comedy is a delight (Schwäbische Zeitung, 22.08.2014)
Kleine Oper am See thrills us with Otto Nicolais “The Merry Wives of Windsor”
The “Kleine Oper am See” has again put on a magnificent summer production in the shape Otto Nicolais’s charming, comic-fantastic opera “Die lustigen Weiben von Windsor”.
We were promised “a modern adaptation, cheeky, young and sparklingly staged” and so it was … The whole thing has to be staged with a light hand and served as a Kammerspiel, which was guaranteed by the lively project manager Isabell Marquardt and the director Tine Topsøe, along with the highly harmoniously playing ensemble.
… Everyone fits exactly into the picture, even if the tall Florian Engelhardt does not match the usual image of the podgy Sir John Falstaff despite the stuffed belly. He does not demean him to play the clown, but leaves him with enough dignity to celebrate the happy ending with the others…
The juxtaposition of Frau Fluth’s extravagant modern look and Frau Reich’s historic costume works well. A mixture that is turned round amongst their husbands: for here, Herr Fluth (Clemens Gnad), raging in his black-and-gold frock coat is grounded in former times, while Herr Reich (Manfred Plomer) is in the suit of modernity, the rationality.
… Even if the main characters are the main focus, one should not forget the ensemble scenes with the well-handled chorus, which play both citizens and elves and wasps in the last act very well attuned – and a special praise for the choreography, which moved the chorus so elegantly… An evening of delight.
Così fan tutte
“Così fan tutte” excites the audience (Südkurier 10.08.2013)Überlingen: In the hall of the Waldorf School the auditorium witnessed a great staging of the Mozart opera “Così fan tutte.” “Die Kleine Oper am See” was first rate.
“Before an enthusiastic crowd the singers, chorus and the small orchestra conjured up an exuberant, cheerful and witty performance full of irony and drama. The young stage director Tine Topsoe from Copenhagen has moved the game of love, passion, disguise and falsehood from the original scene of Naples in the 18th century to Überlingen today and lets the action unfold in front of Greths (known café in Überlingen) scenery. Local colour and additional dialogue gives adds extra spice to the story.
In the Überlinger staging the cynic bartender Alfonso (Hermann Locher) is turned into the service manager at the Greth, who makes a bet with his two yachtsman friends Ferrando (Arndt Kruger) and Guglielmo (Albrecht von Stackelberg) …
The six protagonists, the two couples, as well as Alfonso and Despina all sing and play at a high professional level … With “Così fan tutte” “Die Kleine Oper am See” has successfully taken on a great opera and is thus on the way to becoming a trademark of the regional culture. “
Madame Butterfly
A fairytale of an opera (Tidens Krav, 22.01.2013 (preview))
Stage director Tine Topsøe is sure that the popular and tuneful operas will also appeal in Kristiansund.
“… The Past > The other twist that the stage director makes is to draw the shadows from her (Butterfly’s) past, her roots, more visually onto the stage.
– Butterfly receives some small dolls from her family. They in a way represent the ancestors. Butterfly breaks with her religion and her Japanese culture, she wants to become an American woman and marry the navy lieutenant Pinkerton. But can one escape one’s past?
– I let the dolls emerge as shadows commenting on the life that she chooses, and three dancers from the ballet studio will visualize her past that is haunting her all the time. I think this adds more drama to the clash with the family. Her inner demons are given a face. “
Finally the Butterfly landed (Tidens Krav, 02.02.2013)– the ending is so strong that it sends a shiver through the audience.
Eine Kluge Else
Small opera with great music (Ostsee Zeitung, 17.10.2012)…Four actors at a table, the men in lederhosen, the women in dirndl, together with an opened beer keg. More is not needed for a group of young, energetic artists to extend the line of contemporary works at the Kunsthalle Rostock with one more work that is complex and avant-garde: the first performance of a small opera with great music: “A wise Else”…
The Danish stage director Tine Topsøe (30) has directed imaginatively and without operatic pathos, without corny realism, but rather with the witty naivety of the puppet theatre, with choreographic elements – a fairy tale play and a cool-headed, elegant play with the fairy tale. Her principle is the surprising break, from tears into laughter, from dream to reality and vice-versa – the audience is carried away…
A fairy tale first performance (Norddeutsche Neuste Nachrichten, 18.10.2012)“…But then the Danish stage director Tine Topsoe (*1982) intervened with subtle refinement in the fairy tale, and in line with the music, which like a wide arch points back to the beginning, she let the entire plot run fast backwards until all four characters were in their starting position with their backs to each other. “Now see what you make of it?” – could well be her message to the audience.”
Der Apotheker
Catchy tunes and much heartache (Heilbronner Stimme, 07.05.2012)
A Young Artist’s Network presents Haydn’s “The Pharmacist”
“… In the quaint northern wing of the chateau there was never the dusty atmosphere of national theater, the flair of the chamber opera was very nicely captured. It belongs to the concept of these young musicians, actors and directors, to put up lesser-known pieces from the musical theater repertoire, beyond the unusual venues.
… The staging of Tine Topsøe is straightforward and does not endeavour to create a forced update of the material. In keeping with Grilettas erratic character a lot of bickering in the pharmacy provide variety on the stage… Overall the staging does not want to make an analysis of the story, but to show what it’s all about: a great evening of entertainment.
Abu Hassan
Young opera project with a great deal of imagination (Ostsee Zeitung, 28.03.2011)Children enjoyed Weber’s Abu Hassan
“…With the most economical of means but with considerable imagination, some of the original allurement of theatre is revived here…The young Danish director Tine Topsøe (29 Theatre-Academy, Hamburg) staged the course of events in a vivid and entertaining way, and without any kind of operatic stiffness. It was full of motion and lively situation comedy.
This performance deserved the designation “educationally valuable” for two reasons. Children take an active part, not only as decorum, but a group of children from the CJD Christophorus School Rostock sing the choral parts. And on top of this, three cool, precocious kids badger the narrator. The whole setting does not purely portray childishness, or cater mainly for the allegedly simpler needs of today’s children. It remains opera, and awakens our desire to experience yet another. “
The Rape of Lucretia
May we invite you to see Benjamin Britten? (Hamburger Abendblatt, 15.02.2011)
Wild horses can’t drag you to the opera? You find modern music horrible? If you nonetheless should want to try both, you must come to “The Rape of Lucretia” at the Opera stabile. Danish stage director student Tine Topsøe’s final year production, with its splendidly cast and vocally convincing singers, is very worth seeing. Whoever sees the eight players sing and act in the “all in one” stage design by Monika Diensthuber, witnesses an ensemble who’s lot at rehearsals evidently enabled them to immerse themselves with the greatest sincerity and emotional conviction into the opera’s deeply moving theme.
As in ancient Rome (Hamburger Theatermagazin Godot, März Ausgabe)“Yes, they do still exist, these rarely performed modern operas which leave such a profound impression on you that you need some time after the performance to recover, and then to readjust to the profanity of everyday life. Benjamin Britten’s “The Rape of Lucretia” is without doubt such a piece. One can therefore only congratulate the young opera director Tine Topsoe for having decided to stage this daring work at the Opera Stabile as her final production for her diploma at the Theaterakademie Hamburg… ..A harrowing work which one won’t easily forget, especially because of stage director Tine Topsoe’s and set designer Monika Diensthuber’s powerful imagery.”
Bastien und Bastienne
“Hamburg – Junges Forum Musik und Theater”, 25.02 (Der neue Merker, April Ausgabe)Topsoe approaches Mozart by sharply interlocking the harmless interplay between the characters and their relationships. We see a frustrated, abandoned, emotionally immature woman (sung by the agile and vocally excellent Claudia Rometsch) with television, bottle and soft toy, who shortly after finds herself in one of these cheap relationship shows which engulf the lives of the average central European population every afternoon.
Colas is the show master, and here Andreas Heinemeyer succeeds in fully exploiting all the clichés from which such medial non-events always knit the same pattern – from the soul- uncle feigning sympathy, to the crafty exhibitionist-like animal trainer.“Bastien und Bastienne”: The Mozart piece as a “TV Dating-show” (Hamburger Morgenpost, 26.02.2010)
It’s a long time since I last enjoyed myself so much! Naturally “Bastien und Bastienne” is really just a childish singspiel from the feather of the twelve-year-old Mozart. But in the Forum of the Musikhochschule it’s turned into a delightfully glaring TV “Dating- Show” consistent even up to having the jingles for the commercial breaks composed from the original material (Stage director: Tine Topsoe)!
And of course the narcissistic TV-host (Andreas Heinemeyer) cares more about viewing rates than about he does about patching up the shattered happiness of the young couple. Claudia Rometsch and Andreas Preuss as both former and newly rediscovered lovers Bastienne and Bastien, put their shoulders enthusiastically to the Mozart wheel…..
“Bastien und Bastienne” as a talk-show couple (Die Welt, 27.02.2010)
“…tranferred to the present with a lot of irony and significance.
Stage director Tine Topsøe transfers the pastoral of the child prodigy Mozart to a rating-horny talk-show series called “Colas couples.” A shrewd directing move, which was all the easier for her as she found an astute show host in Andreas Heinemeyer, who understands the impact of the crisis prolonging coupling business, including making use of the studio audience. The way Tine Topsøe makes Bastienne (Claudia Rometsch) portray wounded vanity on camera, so that reconciliation with the repentant Bastien (Andreas Preuss) after transmission time, becomes all the more intimate – leads you to hope for her future deeds of staging… “