Beneath the majestic ceiling of the University Library on Fiolstræde, a spellbinding celebration unfolds. And you are invited as a guest. A dazzling display of magnificent singing and seductive performances that soon begins to reveal its cracks.
As the festivities progress, it quickly becomes clear that you have stepped straight into the dark heart of power. Beneath the glittering surface, alliances shift, old certainties crumble, and the world suddenly belongs to whoever is ruthless enough to seize it.
In The Right of the Strong – The Duty of the Weak, composer Niels Rønsholdt and director Louise Beck cast a penetrating gaze on the nature of power. Their newly written opera draws us into a complex game of power within the historic University Library, where stories of power and human achievement have been collected, catalogued, and preserved through the ages.
Together with the vocal ensemble ARS NOVA Copenhagen, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, and a handpicked cast of singers and contemporary circus performers, they create an immersive experience in which you become an insignificant pawn in a brutal game. The performance weaves together threads from the Old Norse sagas and the age of predators in which we ourselves now live. At a time when the idea of a rules-based world order is losing ground, and power is increasingly exercised without restraint, the work offers a direct, visceral experience of what happens when might replaces right.
Three Operas in Three Years
The Right of the Strong – The Duty of the Weak is the second part of a trilogy of the same name. The first part was staged at the Aarhus Courthouse during the 2025 Aarhus Festival. Face to face with a powerful ensemble of singers from both Ensemble Edge and Ars Nova Copenhagen, audiences experienced a transition between two regimes of power and the abolition of the world’s legal order. The trilogy concludes in 2027 with a chamber opera in the majestic King’s Hall at Sagnlandet Lejre.
Read our interview with Niels Rønsholdt prior to the premiere of the first part of the opera trilogy here.
The Right of the Strong – The Duty of the Weak is produced by OPE-N in collaboration with Aarhus Festival, CPH Opera Festival, and in consultation with The Royal Library, University of Copenhagen, and Sagnlandet Lejre.
The opera is premiered at Copenhagen Opera Festival 13-17 August with 7 sold out performances. Find more information here.