For the first time in its 65 year history the prestigious Bergen International Festival will feature a major artistic production created and undertaken by a brass band.

'Nr. 5 — A Story about Coco Chanel' is the brainchild of Allan Withington, a musician renowned for his fertile imagination and sense of innovative adventure.

Fashion icons

It will feature Manger Musikklag in collaboration with a Bergen college theatre company and a Polish puppeteer in bringing the story of one of the world's most successful and intriguing fashion icons to life.

The Festival runs for 15 days and will feature over 250 events in venues across the city and its surrounding areas, with Allan's ground-breaking production taking place at the Fana Kulturhus on Saturday 26th May (4.00pm).

Coco Chanel

It tells the incredible story of Gabrielle Bonheur 'Coco' Chanel — the woman who famously liberated post-war women from the constraints of what was referred to as the 'corseted silhouette' — heralding a new era of casual elegance — most famously displayed in her creation of the 'little black dress'.

However, hers was a complicated, complex life — from a poverty stricken, abusive childhood and her early professional career as a seamstress and occasional cabaret entertainer to a mistress, boutique owner, couturiere and collaborator during the Nazi occupation of Paris in the Second World War.

She eventually settled, if that is perhaps the right word for a woman with indefatigable energy and sense of purpose, as an iconic fashion designer.

It's a story lived in the public glare, but full of private dichotomies, of a woman obsessed with work almost as a form of revenge against the life she was forced to liveAllan Withington

Fascinating tale

It is a tale that has fascinated Allan for many years as he told 4BR. "I've always been inspired by strong woman and having previously written works on Joan of Arc and Guinevere, Coco Chanel offered another wonderful opportunity to explore that.

It's a story lived in the public glare, but full of private dichotomies, of a woman obsessed with work almost as a form of revenge against the life she was forced to live."

He added: "It's also a story very much of the present time — so we have two seemingly archetypal Swiss bankers (presented as life sized puppets) to tell a story that also has a cathartic effect upon them too.

This is a project I'm very proud of and a story that I feel needs to be told and understood on many different levels.

I hope people enjoy it, and consider looking more closely themselves at the life of a woman like no other — a troubled spirit of liberation and someone who lived her life in the very manner of her epitaph as 'the tragedy of a solitary woman'.

4BR Editor Iwan Fox will be reporting from the world premiere of 'Nr 5 — A Story about Coco Chanel' from the Frana Kulturhus in Bergen on Saturday 26th May.