Why the SLSO’s 2024/25 Season Finale, Peer Gynt, is Unlike Any Other

By Eric Dundon

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s final classical program of the 2024/25 season (May 3-4) concludes a two-year period of traveling in which the orchestra performed throughout the St. Louis community while its home, Powell Hall, undergoes a transformational expansion and renovation. To complete a complementary two-year musical narrative, Music Director Stéphane Denève saved one of the most potent musical depictions of journeying for the season finale: Peer Gynt—the Henrik Ibsen play with music by Edvard Grieg.

“I wanted to culminate with the biggest traveler we have in classical music, which is this amazing character of Peer Gynt,” he said.

In addition to the 200 musicians on the Stifel Theatre stage, the production will be performed with actors and sets from Concert Theatre Works. Director Bill Barclay has adapted Ibsen’s play for the concert hall, elevating the equal partnership between the script and the music.

Here are four reasons why the SLSO’s 24/25 season classical finale is unlike any other.

Ibsen’s play bucked traditional limitations of stage productions when he wrote it in the 1860s-‘70s. As a result, the play has five acts and 40 scenes across three continents and 60 years. The running time eclipses five hours. Barclay’s adaptation distills this complex and monumental work into less than two hours while keeping the original intent of the play intact.

The play draws upon Scandinavian folklore and follows the travels of the title character from Norway to North Africa and back, encountering new friends and foes. For Denève, Ibsen’s play and Grieg’s accompanying music foreshadowed the future of storytelling at its 1876 premiere.

“Ibsen was able to mix many different theatrical genres into one production,” he said. “He invented a kind of fantasy, sci-fi cinema experience before movies existed.”

The Concert Theatre Works cinematic adaptation is a perfect marriage between epic music and storytelling.

“Above all, we have stayed true to the spirit of equal partnership between Ibsen and Grieg in our ‘concert-theatre’ approach,” Barclay wrote in his program note for the production.

Joining Denève on stage at Stifel Theatre will be the orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, and also a cast of actors, internationally acclaimed soprano Camilla Tilling, and Vidar Skrede on Hardanger fiddle (a traditional Norwegian instrument).

Actors will tell a condensed version of Ibsen’s play, enhanced by beautiful and outlandish costumes, set pieces, and puppetry, creating an engaging, cross-disciplinary experience.

The large stage at Stifel Theatre will be filled for this multi-sensory concert.

Grieg’s incidental music premiered alongside the play in 1876. Since then, some of the music has become widely recognized, including the peaceful and pastoral Morning Mood, and the foreboding and ever-churning In the Hall of the Mountain King. Grieg created two suites from the incidental music—music created to enhance the atmosphere of a story told in another medium—that have received countless performances worldwide, but performances of the entire incidental music remain rare.

For Denève, these concerts are an opportunity to prove that Grieg wrote two hours of outstanding music for the play beyond what audiences likely know.

“I’m delighted that the audience should discover that there is so much great music that is at the same level of Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King,” he said. “There are so many spectacular moments for orchestra, chorus, and soprano soloist.”

Many monumental pieces of symphonic music are deeply moving and emotional, but Denève says to expect something a little different with Peer Gynt: humor. As a character, Peer Gynt is “a multi-faceted hero,” Denève said, “but a hard one to love, to be honest.”

Peer Gynt follows the many misguided adventures and mishaps of the hero over the course of 60 years. The play is considered a satire on ego and narrow-mindedness, amusingly brought to life in this production by a cast of sometimes silly characters, including a troll king and troll princess, a gnome-like creature, and a blacksmith.

The story’s underlying theme is the exploration of what it means to be oneself and to live authentically, a journey that can resonate at all ages, Denève said. And the audience should expect many hearty laughs.

“This version of Peer Gynt is so much fun,” Denève said.

Critics have called the staged production “tremendously entertaining” (The Boston Globe) and “a captivating surprise… yet true to the music” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

The performances are Saturday and Sunday, May 3-4, 2025, at Stifel Theatre. Tickets are available at slso.org.

Eric Dundon is the SLSO’s Public Relations Director.