Le Smerz at the Carignano: when pop music finds its theatre

Catharina Stoltenberg is dressed in white, a light dress billowing in the breeze from the fans, her loose brown hair dancing around her face: a Nordic Marilyn Monroe, with a touch of something more restless and icy. At one point, she grabs the microphone by its lead and swings it round above her head: a rebellious gesture straight out of a rock concert, an act of defiance amidst the stucco and gilded stages of Turin’s Teatro Carignano. It is in this oscillation between grace and disorder, between sensuality and detachment, that the charm of Smerz lies. On Saturday 31 October, the Norwegian duo delivered one of the most successful moments of the twenty-fifth edition of the C2C Festival: an hour of music for a matinee that brought the event back, for the first time in 11 years, to Turin’s 18th-century theatre, now home to the Stabile theatre company and a centre for drama. The choice, in co-production with MITO SettembreMusica, was by no means merely decorative: here, the apparent incongruity between electronic pop and the solemnity of the theatre became part of the show itself.

Alongside the magnetic figure of Catharina Stoltenberg – daughter, incidentally, of the politician Jens Stoltenberg, former Prime Minister of Norway and former Secretary-General of NATO – is Henriette Motzfeldt, who is only seemingly more low-key: the two take turns at the microphone, keyboards and synthesisers, and at one point during the performance she even takes up the violin. The line-up is completed by bass and drums, whilst a piano occasionally punctuates the electronic textures. Everything is finely calibrated, whispered, suspended, slow – yet never cold. Stoltenberg’s theatrical gestures coexist with the chemistry between the two, the more immediate melodies with sudden changes of pace, and the softness of pop with a touch of rock’s rougher edge.

Friends since their school days in Oslo, the Smerz then moved to Copenhagen, where they developed a sound that is difficult to pigeonhole into a single genre. Following the EPs *Okey* and *Have fun*, they released *Believer* in 2021, a debut album blending electronic music with experimental elements. With *Big city life*, released in 2025 on the Danish label Escho, they shifted their focus towards a more narrative-driven art-pop sound. At the Carignano, the tracks from that album – from ‘Imagine This’ to ‘Feisty’, right through to the finale, ‘You Got Time and I Got Money’ – took on new depths in their live performance. The audience loved it, and by the end, both the stage and the audience erupted into a long round of applause. What is surprising, however, is not just the quality of the performance: it is how this music managed to connect with a venue designed centuries ago for a different repertoire. The sounds come through clearly, the pauses take on weight, and the interplay between the two voices allows for nuances that might otherwise be lost. And the theatre, rather than overwhelming the concert with its solemnity, provides the perfect setting. Le Smerz, for their part, seem to grasp every possibility offered by performing on such a unique stage.

This edition of C2C was not without its share of criticism, some of which emerged on social media: a few acts already seen in Turin, queues that were a bit too long to get in and to get a drink, and an artistic programme deemed by some to be less surprising than in the past. But the avant-garde can also consist of imagining new ways of presenting music, not just discovering new acts. The Smerz matinee points the way: certainly not by moving all concerts to theatres – heaven forbid – but by seeking out the venue that allows each piece of music to express itself to the full. If the 25th-anniversary C2C leaves us with one valuable insight, it is precisely this: the venue is not merely a setting, but an artistic choice, upon which depends what the music can offer both to those who play it and to those who listen to it.