Peer Gynt directs Southampton Philharmonic Choir) reprised the earlier performance by their colleagues in Southampton. At Vinstra in the Gudbrandsdalen valley, Henrik Ibsen and Peer Gynt have been celebrated with an annual festival since 1967. The festival is one of Norway’s largest cultural festivals, and is recognized by the Norwegian Government as a leading institution of presenting culture in nature. The festival has a broad festival program with theatre, concerts, an art exhibition and several debates and literature seminars. The main event in the festival is the outdoor theatre production of "Peer Gynt" at Gålå. The play is staged in "Peer Gynt"s
Peer Gynt (Grieg) ""Peer Gynt" progresses slowly," he wrote to a friend in August 1874, “and there is no possibility of having it finished by autumn. It is a terribly unmanageable subject.” "The more he saturated his mind with the powerful poem, the more clearly he saw that he was the right man for a work of such witchery and so permeated with the Norwegian spirit," his wife wrote of him and his music. Even though the première was a "triumphant success", it prompted Grieg to complain bitterly that the Swedish management of the theatre had given him specifications as to the duration