Opera performance with soprano Nour Darwish
As part of Larissa Sansour’s exhibition, Kunsthal Charlottenborg presents the Danish premiere of As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night – a cross disciplinary work in which visual art, opera, and mourning rituals merge in an audiovisual performance.
As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night is created by artists Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind and engages with inherited trauma, loss, and grief. The aria is performed by the Palestinian soprano Nour Darwish and composed by the Lebanese composer Anthony Sahyoun. The composition is based on Austrian composer Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder from 1905 and the Palestinian folk song Al Ouf Mash’al.
Kindertotenlieder is Mahler’s musical setting of Friedrich Rückert’s poems, written after the loss of two of his children. In Al Ouf Mash’al, a Palestinian woman mourns the loss of her beloved, who was conscripted into the Ottoman army during World War I. These two musical traditions intertwine in a moving lament over more than a hundred years of grief.
The opera is presented in a special scenography at Takkelloftet, where Nour Darwish’s live performance is integrated into a video installation filmed in an abandoned chapel and combined with documentary footage from the Imperial War Museum, archival material from World War I, and the artist’s own animated tableaux.
As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night will be performed on this one evening only in Copenhagen. Larissa Sansour’s solo exhibition These Moments Will Disappear Too can be experienced at Kunsthal Charlottenborg until 15 February 2026.
Practical information
Tickets:
Need to be booked in advance, the ticket include admission for Kunsthal Charlottenborg at the same day.
Location:
Takkelloftet
Ekvipagemestervej 10, 1438 Copenhagen K
