Mark-Anthony Turnage and Lee Hall's opera from Vinterberg's film Festen had its world premiere at Covent Garden and won the Olivier for best new opera production.
The Royal Opera gave the world premiere of Festen on the Main Stage at Covent Garden on Tuesday 11 February 2025, turning Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film of a family birthday party into an opera sung without an interval.
Vinterberg’s The Celebration won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1998 and launched Dogme 95, the movement whose rules forbade special effects and required natural light and hand-held cameras. Lee Hall, who wrote the screenplay for Billy Elliot, made the English libretto, and Mark-Anthony Turnage, the composer of Anna Nicole and Coraline, set it. At a Danish country hotel in the summer of 1989, Christian rises to toast his father Helge on his sixtieth birthday and accuses him of abusing Christian and his late twin sister Linda.
Richard Jones directed, with sets by Miriam Buether, and Edward Gardner conducted. Allan Clayton sang Christian, Stéphane Degout his brother Michael, Gerald Finley Helge and Natalya Romaniw their sister Helena, with John Tomlinson as Grandpa. The production was shared with Finnish National Opera and Ballet.
Festen went on to take the Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production in 2025, where Clayton also won for outstanding achievement in opera, and the World Premiere Award at the International Opera Awards that November. In March 2026 the Royal Philharmonic Society gave Turnage its Large-Scale Composition award for it.