Opera Café presents curated, high-quality concerts in informal settings, where the audience gets close to outstanding opera singers.

We challenge both audiences and performers with a diverse program, highlighting queer, unique, and marginalized voices. In this way, we create a low-threshold meeting place that fosters dialogue, knowledge, and interest in opera, reaching a broad audience.

In collaboration with Queer Voices, we provide space and work for queer artists and stories. Queer performers and audience members have long been part of the opera community, and we aim to make room for stories that reflect their experiences. The audience gains insight into the music and the singer’s artistry through personal anecdotes and historical perspectives.

Opera Café has grown into a platform for artistic collaboration across genres, without hierarchy or the pursuit of status. We aim to reflect the diversity of society, and today our audience ranges from 18 to 90. Encounters across generations, cultures, and identities have become a natural part of our expression.

About the Company

Queer Voices creates a platform that provides work, visibility, and artistic development for queer talents and stories. Queer audience members and artists have long been part of the opera community, and the company aims to meet the need for queer perspectives to be represented within the opera format.

In collaboration with the Opera Friends Association, they established the concert series Opera Café at Rosendal, located at Rosendal Theatre in Trondheim, in the autumn of 2020. Since then, more than 30 concerts have been held through the pandemic and up to the present day.

The company is run by opera singers Eldrid Gorset (she/her), Therese-Angelle Khachik (they/them), and Maria Dale Johannessen (she/her). They have backgrounds from the Norwegian Academy of Music, the Barratt Due Institute of Music, and the Academy of Opera at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and combine the work with their own freelance careers.

Since its founding in 2018, Queer Voices has participated in numerous events and festivals across Norway, including Oslo Pride, Trondheim Pride, Kristiansund Opera Festival Weeks, Bergen Rainbow Days, Tromsø, NeadalsPride, MiniPride, and Pride on the Border.

In September 2022, the company premiered its first full-length opera production, The Merry Wives of Windsor by Otto Nicolai, at Rosendal Theatre during Trondheim Pride. The following year, the production was invited to the renowned Grimeborn Opera Festival in London as the first Norwegian company and the first queer company to be featured.

Knut Erik Jensen: Pianist (he/him)

Knut Erik Jensen has been the regular pianist for Opera Café at Rosendal since 2020, working closely with both Queer Voices and the Opera Friends Association. He lives in Selbu, is a university lecturer at the NTNU Department of Music, head of the piano program at Trondheim Municipal School of Music and Performing Arts, and maintains an active freelance career. He holds a master’s degree in performance piano from NTNU.

Jensen has for many years been a central musician in the Trøndelag region — as accompanist, répétiteur, chamber musician, and soloist. He has performed nearly 200 concerts in the United States since 2007, both as a soloist and together with singers and orchestras. He has premiered Ståle Kleiberg’s piano sonata Ruf und Nachklang and contributed to several album releases, including Requiem, The Teacher Who Never Was, Trisyn (Marcus Paus), as well as Unravel Tradition (Simax) and Where Folk Music Meets Classical with Tone Kummervold.