The Danish National Opera – the whole country’s opera
The Danish National Opera is Denmark’s only nationwide touring opera company and a distinctive, pace-setting part of the Danish cultural scene. For decades the Danish National Opera has presented productions of the highest artistic quality and endeavoured to give the public all over Denmark the best opera experiences imaginable. 

A touring opera
The Danish National Opera was founded in Aarhus in 1947. In 1977 the Danish National Opera achieved its status as a touring opera company by entering into a partnership with the symphony orchestras in Aarhus, Aalborg, South Jutland/North Schleswig, Odense and Zealand. This made the Danish National Opera the whole country’s opera, which every year can offer fully manned, symphonically accompanied productions in all parts of the country, including the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen.

Cooperation with cultural institutions
The Danish National Opera has always had strong ties to Aarhus and wishes to help to profile Aarhus as a national and international city of culture. The Danish National Opera therefore works determinedly to strengthen collaboration across the cultural institutions in Aarhus in order to present musical experiences of international format.

With the expansion of the Aarhus Concert Hall in 2007 the cooperation among the cultural institutions was strengthened, since it brought the Danish National Opera, the Aarhus Concert Hall, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Aarhus and the theatre company Filuren together in a new dynamic house of culture. Here too the Danish National Opera takes the lead in the exploration of new collaborative projects and has taken the initiative for among other things major opera concerts, music drama productions for children and the young, and traineeships for singing students. And new possibilities are being explored all the time.

Culture/commerce collaborations
For several years the Danish National Opera has also had a good, close relationship with the Danish business world in the form of business clubs, major sponsorship agreements and collaborations with major commercial foundations. These collaborations make it possible for the Danish National Opera to offer new, exciting opera events on a regular basis, to bring extra funding to opera productions and to increase knowledge of opera as a living, dynamic form of culture.

Repertoire
The Danish National Opera focuses on presenting a varied, versatile repertoire with the most important classical works as well as new Danish music drama. Each year the Danish National Opera offers two touring productions as well as a special event in August produced exclusively for performance in the Århus Concert Hall: the special productions include some of the greatest works of the opera world, including the performance in 1987 of the first Danish production of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung since 1912.

Besides the big opera productions the Danish National Opera produces chamber operas, music drama works for children and the young, choral concerts and concerts with the world’s leading opera stars in collaboration with its regular partners. In addition the Danish National Opera wants to be at the forefront in the work of presenting opera for children, young people and adults in order to open up the world of opera for as many people as possible.

The Danish National Opera is based in Aarhus and is supported by the Danish Ministry of Culture and the Aarhus City Council. The Danish National Opera has its own production and administration premises in Aarhus, its own regular opera chorus and at present has a staff of 65 distributed over artistic staff, administration, technical staff, hairstyling and wardrobe.