Opera Café: An Evening of queer Voices

An evening with the Skeive Stemmer opera company

This has become a popular tradition. The three co-founders of the opera company present opera and operetta by queer composers and other treasures.
Operakafé presents curated quality concerts in informal settings, where the audience gets up close to outstanding opera singers. We challenge both the audience and performers with a varied program and highlight queer, unique and marginalized voices. In this way, we create a low-threshold meeting place that contributes to dialogue, knowledge and interest in opera, and that reaches a wide audience.

Participating:
Eldrid Gorset soprano (she/her),
Angelle Khachik soprano (they/them)
Maria Dale Johannessen mezzo-soprano (she/her).
Knut Erik Jensen, piano (he, him)
Arranged by the Operavennforening in collaboration with Skeive Stemmer

Arranged by the Operavennforening in collaboration with Skeive Stemmer opera company. The concert series is supported by the Directorate of Culture and sparebank1 smn samfunnsutbytte.

In collaboration with Skeive Stemmer, we provide space and work for queer artists and stories. Queer performers and audiences have long been part of the opera community, and we want to give space to stories that reflect their experiences. The audience gains insight into the music and the singer's artistry through personal anecdotes and historical perspectives.

Operakafé has developed into an arena for artistic collaborations across genres, without hierarchy and status-seeking. We want to reflect the diversity of society, and the audience today ranges from 18 to 90 years old. Generational meetings and meetings across culture and identity have become a natural part of our expression.

About the company
Skeive Stemmer creates an arena that provides work, visibility and artistic development for queer talents and stories. Queer audiences and artists have long been part of the opera community, and the company wants to meet the need to see queer perspectives represented in the opera format.

In collaboration with the Operavennforeningen, they established the concert series Operakafé på Rosendal at Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in the fall of 2020. Since then, over 30 concerts have been arranged throughout the pandemic and to this day.

The company is run by opera singers Eldrid Gorset (she/her), Therese-Angelle Khachik (they/them) and Maria Dale Johannessen (she/her). They have backgrounds from the Norwegian Academy of Music, the Barratt Due Institute of Music and the Opera Academy at the Oslo Academy of the Arts, and combine their work with their own freelance careers.

Since their inception in 2018, Skeive Stemmer has participated in a number of events and festivals throughout Norway, including Oslo Pride, Trondheim Pride, Operafestukene in Kristiansund, Regnbuedagene in Bergen, Tromsø, NeadalsPride, MiniPride and Pride på Grensen.