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.
The Right of the Strong – The Duty of the Weak is an opera trilogy about power and the consequences of power. The operas are loosely inspired by the ancient Saga of Hervör and Heidrek, which tells the story of a magical, cursed sword and how the power bound to it ultimately destroys an entire family from within. The Right of the Strong – The Duty of the Weak is not a historical opera; rather, it explores the universal nature of power's destructive force and a social order in which brute strength overrides the qualities and structures that are meant to restrain it.
Part Two is staged in the University of Copenhagen Library where stories of power and human achievement have been collected, catalogued, and preserved through the ages. It follows Her, who rules with the weapon she retrieved from her father's grave in the first part. She attempts to share power with one of her two children, The Good Child, but the plan fails, because power - the weapon - cannot be shared.
Later, The Other Child (also known as The Evil Child) enters the story. Refusing to accept the role of "the other", he seizes power for himself, becoming the first - the rightful heir, the most important one - to secure a place in the recorded history of the books.
Outside the world of books, however, things are falling apart. The sun scorches, the rain floods, the wind ravages the land, and the people are starving. A sacrifice must be made to restore balance. But what can be sacrificed? Or rather, who?
In the end, the most important one must be sacrificed. And so The Other Child also succumbs to the weapon, which ultimately acquires a voice and a will of its own.
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.
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 second part of the opera is premiered at Copenhagen Opera Festival 13-17 August with 7 sold out performances. Find more information here.