ABSTRACT
During the early 1870s, Grieg was particularly taken up with writing music for the stage. It is obvious from many of his shorter works that Grieg's sense of the dramatic was well developed; one might cite songs such as the Ibsen settings, op.25, where Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau's observation that Lieder are ‘opera in miniature’ is well illustrated. It was a great sorrow to Grieg that he did not manage to write the definitive Norwegian opera, but the high hopes he had with Olav Trygvason never came to fruition.
