Hjem (2023)

Loneliness has many faces, living next door to each other. The opera HJEM takes the essence of loneliness and leads it slowly and lovingly further into the light towards community. You can look forward to a surprising, genre-bending and deeply humanistic opera experience.

HJEM is a site-specific opera, created with and within Porten, the former Vridsløselille State Prison. Here, the walls and long corridors are full of stories of loss and desperation. The opera occupies the abandoned building with the beautiful, dissonant sounds of a lone cello, in an encounter with both intimately personal and primal singing voices. In a prison walk, the audience will have the opportunity to feel the pain of loneliness and the power of community as a giant Choir of Loneliness leads the audience through the empty corridors. 

HJEM creates authentic and intimate encounters between audience and performers as poet Stine Rejnholdt's libretto gives voice to real people's fragmented and hidden stories of loneliness. 

In the 160-year-old state prison, this opera invites the audience deep into loneliness, while the encounter in music offers hope for a way out.