“I can honestly say that if this was the last performance I ever heard, I would have died perfectly happily. Amazing.”
(Simon Cummings (5:4) after listening to Kaija Saariaho‘s “Quatre Instants” at Nordic Music Days in Bodø, Norway, November 2019.)
Berit Norbakken’s repertoire spans the history of Western music, from the Renaissance and baroque periods up to the most recent contemporary music.
BBC Radio 3 gave the following review of her recording of Ave Maria by Fartein Valen (Refractions, 2013, BIS Records):
«…and so wonderfully performed, and the fabulous soprano, Berit Norbakken Solset, who has exactly the right blend of straightness, so you can hear every note, but when she decides to open up, it´s just fabulous, for me, it´s got everything…»
She appears regularly with the group Barokksolistene in different concerts and recordings, and most notably their award-winning recording and concert series ‘The Image of Melancholy’. As a concert singer, she has also given concerts in cities as Tokyo and Sydney.
Berit Norbakken made her opera debut in Ophelias – Death by Water Singing, by Henrik Hellstenius. Her opera roles have included Abel in Il Primo Omicidio (Scarlatti), Adonis in Giardino d’Amore (Scarlatti), Ermione in Oreste (Handel), Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart), Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini), Belinda in Dido and Aeneas (Purcell), Sigrun in the world premiere of Malleus Maleficarum (Rasmussen) and an ensemble part in Melancholia (Haas).
She works closely with Juanjo Mena, and performs regularly with conductors including Ottavio Dantone, Andreas Spering, Mikhail Pletnev, Robert King, Olof Boman, Benjamin Bayl, Herbert Böck, Simon Gaudenz, Bernard Labadie, Andrew Parrott, Vasily Petrenko, George Petrou, and Jos van Immerseel.
