The first stage production of the verse-play…

The first stage production of the verse-play Peer Gynt by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, with incidental music by Edvard Grieg (which includes Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King), premieres on February 24, 1876, in Oslo (at this time called Christiania), Norway.

A five-act play in verse, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt and written in the Dano-Norwegian language, it is today the most widely performed Norwegian play.

Ibsen had written Peer Gynt in deliberate disregard of the limitations that the conventional stagecraft of the nineteenth century imposes on drama.

Its forty scenes move uninhibitedly in time and space and between consciousness and the unconscious, blending folkloric fantasy and unsentimental realism.

Many of Grieg’s pieces from this work, composed at the request of the author, will become very popular in the orchestral suites or piano and piano-duet arrangements.