Paa Vidderne
The main character in Henrik Ibsen’s poem Paa Vidderne from 1859 is a young poet who takes to the mountains and stays up there. He leaves his young bride down in the valley, because he wants to live in a state of elevated artistic independence and look at people and society from above.
Directed by Jan Hårstad and Aage Kvalbein
This poem contains the seed of the metrical play Comedy of Love (1862) and it also deals with the contradiction between the call of the poet and the everyday duties.
Jan Hårstad has been an actor at the National Theatre since 1968. In addition to giving life to a series of Ibsen parts - among them Werle in The Wild Duck and Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler – he has presented a number of literary programmes. In the Spring of 2002 he presented the programmes ’Slaves of Love’ and ’The Fiddle in the wild Forest’ (Felen i ville skogen) based on short stories by Hans E. Kinck, both with love as the central theme.
Jan Hårstad appears with musical accompaniment by Aage Kvalbein, one of Norway’s leading cellists, professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music and an important partner in this poetic excursion.