Presscuts

”Hakan Starkenberg gives a very vivid performance using his whole body - his face grimaces in frustra- tion as he tries to make himself understood...” ”The era is beautifully captured throughout the opera in both refe- rences to contemporary medical science and in the music hall genre.

”NorrlandsOperan’s commissioned ’The Elephant Man’ stems from some kind of timelessness: the idea of inner and outer beauty, goodness and evil, Dr.

”It was a great opera experience, well worth the long train journey and a few days in the City of Birches, Umeå.”

”As a Hollywood action movie it all comes down to a male duel and the magnificent choir finale is a truly heartbreaking prayer for a more peaceful world.”

Evangelistens parti glödde så att det brändes

The King of Fools is more than a chamber opera. It's part of the clinical record of a leap forward in mental-health care, a patient's-eye view starting when Elgard Jonsson, after a traumatic childhood and a schizophrenic crisis at age sixteen, entered a mental hospital in the summer of 1967.

"Curiously inspiring, however, is Carl Unander-Scharin´s "Tokfursten", a fearless examination of Schizophrenia, couched in a musical language, at once wide-ranging yet tautly disciplined."

“Typical of Tokfursten was also that it succeeded in telling this controversial contemporary story without losing opera’s demand as a genre for timelessness. The inner worlds of the king of fools are strongly portrayed.

Ihre szenen (Anna Larsson) mit Persson gestalten sich  - nicht zuletzt durch die suggestive Eindringlichkeit beider Sängerdarsteller in ihrer Partnerbeziehung - zu den berühresten Momenten des Werkes, das beim Publikum sichtliche Spuren den Erschütterung hinterliess und dessen mit Standing ovations gefeierte Interpretation zu den Höhepunkten der über 30 jährig

"La partitura dell´opera e stata scritta da un giovane compositore, Carl Unander-Scharin, ed e un lavoro sostanzialmente riuscito, che illustra con finezza e compassione le alluscinazione schizofreniche ma anche i momenti meno terribili nella situazione angoscioso e tremenda dell Principe Pazzo"