Slovenská hudba, Vol. 48, No 4, p.289-315, 2022

Bergliot: The Only Melodrama by Edvard Grieg

Grieg’s melodrama Bergliot (1871) is a setting of the eponymous poem by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, based on a real event from 1050. Bergliot, the central character of the drama, is the wife of a powerful nobleman and warlord. Due to a treacherous murder she loses her husband and son. In his poem Bjørnson used a number of archaisms and tried to imitate the style of Norwegian sagas. Grieg’s music excellently corresponds with the harsh sound of the poem. The composer even intensifies it using music-rhetoric devices in line with the tradition of Musica poetica, with which he got acquainted during his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory (1858–1862). Grieg expressed his distinctive demands regarding the performance of the work. The interpretation of melodrama by a narrator differs today from historical interpretations: contrary to the former ideal of dramatic performance it leans more towards dramatic realism and understated performance and leads from the usage of external devices to ever deeper psychological analysis and matter-of-factness of dramatic expression in line with naturalness and truthfulness.