Den Nationale Scene

In 1850, the violinist and social activist Ole Bull, a distant cousin of Edvard Grieg, founded a Norwegian Theatre in Bergen in the old building of the Komediehuset on Engen, around 200m from where the new building stands today. That theatre lasted for thirteen years before going bankrupt; over that period, around 950 performances were given with Norwegian actors. Not until 1876 was the Norwegian Theatre reborn in the same Komediehuset. The monumental present-day building of Den Nationale Scene, built in 1909, has three stages. Ole Bull’s historical theatre building, after a brief episode as the second stage of Den Nationale Scene (1934–1837), functioned as a cinema until 1981.