As the two teams meet once again at this World Cup in the round of 16, the opera is reviving memories – and reminding Brazil that Norway are unconquered by them yet. They have never beaten them, even in friendlies. Brazil might not find it funny but Norway does.

“When you watch the match (1998) between Norway and Brazil with the intention of making an opera, you see how incredibly many big and dramatic stories there are during a football match,” Kalvø told Sceneweb, a performing arts hub. “In the last 15 minutes of this match alone, there are at least ten stories that could have been fantastic to dramatize,” he said.

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Sceneweb recalls the group game when “Norway went bananas.” Oslo’s main street Karl Johan, which has seen Viking Rows this year, had fans dancing on them. Ordinary folks jumped into fountains and broke into songs. It was the first time anyone had seen the poker faced penalty taker Kjetil Rekdal, smile. “Everything was possible this evening,” Sceneweb writes.

All of it made it to the opera, though the Flo-pass was the centerpiece and the alert referee lionised as a hero. With a comic slant, footballers drenched in sweaty jerseys, ski masks, and the ball in the crosshairs made up a unique opera setting, as reported by NKR.

The referee pointing to the spot for the penalty after the shirt-tug received a crescendo by Helge Førde, a jazz band intimate with south American culture, playing New Orleans gospel jazz, while hailing from Langevag. “You know that in opera there are a lot of emotions. We are going to try to show what can happen during a football match, and there can be a lot of things,” the band told NKR.

Kalvø was unapologetic about taking creative liberties, saying, “It has been very tempting to let completely different things happen in this story than in the match, so yes, it happens. It is very nice to have the power to rewrite history in retrospect. That power should be used when you have the chance.”

The opera was directed by stage director Kari Standal Pavelich who hadn’t watched the 1998 game but saw this as an opportunity to blend two folk cultures. “It is no longer just the fancy, but ordinary people who go to the opera. Now we hope to bring in both football fans and those who like opera, and I think we will have a fantastic show,” she told NKR. “And it is not just about football. We are trying to recreate the society of Norway and the rest of the world in 1998”

Kalvø admitted to being an opera ignoramus himself, though he knew straight away that Norway beating Brazil was Norse-lore. He would channelise a different US President from back in the day though. “I am, as Barack Obama would have said, humble about this task. I have great respect for people who know something I don’t. I don’t know much about opera at all, I contribute with football, nonsense, nonsense and words,” he told NKR.