Berit Norbakken’s repertoire spans the history of Western music, from the Renaissance and baroque periods up to the most recent contemporary music.
Berit Norbakken belongs to a special group of sopranos who are characterized by courage and exceptional abilities. Very few sopranos have equilibristic and challenging works such as György Ligeti's Mysteries of the Macabre, Kaija Saariaho's Quatre instants and György Kurtág's Kafka-Fragments in their repertoire. Berit does.
She appears regularly with the group Barokksolistene in different concerts and recordings, most notably their award-winning recording and concert series The Image of Melancholy. As a recitalist, she has also given concerts in cities such as Tokyo and Sydney.
Berit Norbakken Solset made her opera debut in Ophelias—Death by Water Singing by Henrik Hellstenius. Her opera roles have included Abel in Il primo omicidio (Scarlatti), Adonis in Il giardino d’amore (Scarlatti), Ermione in Oreste (Handel), Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart), Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini), Belinda in Dido and Aeneas (Purcell), Sigrun in the world premiere of Malleus Maleficarum (Rasmussen) and an ensemble part in Melancholia (Haas).
She works closely with Juanjo Mena, and their recording of the vocal music of Juan Crisostomo Arriaga with the BBC Philharmonic has been very well received. Norbakken performs regularly with conductors including Daniel Reuss, Ottavio Dantone, Andreas Spering, Benjamin Bayl, Herbert Böck, Simon Gaudenz, Bernard Labadie, Andrew Parrott, Vasily Petrenko, George Petrou and Jos van Immerseel.