THE SHINING at Malmö Opera
Stephen King's classic horror story has moved to Malmö Opera, and it's a breathtaking experience: a visually strong and vocally impressive horror journey.
The first thing that strikes you is the set design. Overlook Hotel is both magnificent and menacing. It is beautiful, almost opulent, but at the same time there is a constant feeling that something is wrong, that there is something behind the walls, under the floors, and in the corridors that you would rather not encounter. The lighting, set design, video, and details work together very effectively. You shudder more than once. And that is perhaps precisely where the show is at its best: when it does not try to scare us with traditional horror effects but lets the environment and music create psychological discomfort.
Making a horror opera is of course a pretty bold project. Horror isn't exactly the genre you first associate with the opera stage, but Malmö Opera itself describes the work as a psychological drama filled with illusions and nightmarish visions, and that's a pretty apt description.
The singers are also impressive. Peter Kajlinger as Jack Torrance and Cornelia Beskow as Wendy carry the dramatic center with great presence. Kajlinger brings out Jack's gradual transformation from frustrated writer to something considerably darker, while Beskow gives Wendy both power and humanity. The main characters themselves have described the performance as an excellent opportunity to explore the most extreme emotions, and it's easy to see that on stage. And then Patrik Ringborg. He leads the Malmö Opera Orchestra with a great sense of drama. The music is allowed to creep, vibrate, rumble, and suddenly explode. It is not an orchestra that only accompanies what is happening on stage; it is part of the horror itself. Malmö Opera has a very strong artistic team behind the production, with Keith Warner as director and Ashley Martin-Davis as set designer.
The premiere audience was also a bit different from the traditional opera audience, younger, mixed and obviously curious about what happens when Stephen King meets opera. And happily, there were several who had dressed up really nicely for the evening: tuxedos, beautiful creations and the occasional real premiere outfit. This naturally added another dimension to the evening.
The story and theme itself, however, is a bit uneven, at least for me. I think the idea is brilliant: to take King's story of isolation, madness, family, and evil and express it through opera. But sometimes the psychological discomfort drags on, and toward the end the drama loses some of the sharpness it built so effectively in the first part. This is also where I think the performance differs from Kubrick's film. The opera does not try to compete with the film in iconic images or pure horror effect; it rather seeks the inner darkness. When it succeeds, it is really strong.
It is also worth remembering that this is a relatively unusual opera form. Pulitzer Prize winners Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell wrote the work, based on Stephen King's 1977 novel. It premiered in Minnesota in 2016 and is now coming to Malmö for a Scandinavian premiere.
My verdict? Go! Go above all for the set design, the lighting, the orchestra, and the singers. It is visually magnificent, musically impressive and at times genuinely unpleasant. And perhaps that is precisely what is most fascinating about The Shining: you enter Malmö Opera and sit comfortably in your chair – and after a while you start to wonder if it is really the audience looking at the Overlook Hotel... or if the Overlook Hotel is looking back at the audience.
Rating:
The Shining at Malmö Opera will be performed August 22 – October 7, 2026. The performance is approximately 2 hours and 25 minutes including intermission.
