Savonlinna Opera Festival 2023
Savonlinna Opera Festival 2023
An opera festival in the Finnish summer is an opportunity to enjoy not only high-quality opera performances but also wonderfully light July nights and Nordic nature. The small town of Savonlinna is full of life in July. The medieval Olavinlinna castle on the shore of the famous Lake Saimaa plays host to the festival, which can be reached from Helsinki by train and plane. Visiting artists at Savonlinna Opera Festival in summer 2023 include Lisette Oropesa, Frédéric Antoun, and conductor Sakari Oramo. In 2023 the Savonlinna Opera Festival will take place from 1 to 30 July 2023.
LISETTE OROPESA IN ROMEO AND JULIET
The month-long Savonlinna Opera Festival presents five to six different operas each year. The premiere of summer 2023 is Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. Director Amy Lane has set the events on the dangerous streets of 19th century New York, creating fascinating tension against Charles Gounod’s love-filled music.
Two renowned couples have been cast in the lead roles: Lisette Oropesa and Frédéric Antoun alternate with the Finnish soprano Marjukka Tepponen, who recently debuted at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and Antonio Poli. Lisette Oropesa will also give her own solo recital concert in Olavinlinna.
Romeo and Juliet is a Malmö Opera production, which will premiere in Malmö, Sweden, in November 2022.
WHAT IS THE SECRET OF SAVONLINNA OPERA FESTIVAL’S THE MAGIC FLUTE?
Three, even four generations have already marvelled at The Magic Flute at the Savonlinna Opera Festival. It’s an opera phenomenon and by far the most requested wish in our audience feedback.
Summer 2023 will see the 50th anniversary of its premiere. In 1973, The Magic Flute was directed by August Everding (1928–1999), with sets and costumes by Toni Businger (1934–2019). They first visited Olavinlinna by rowing boat in the middle of winter. The Finnish language production is considered a particularly accomplished introduction to the world of opera. It has already been seen by an audience of more than 200 000 people.
The Magic Flute of summer 2023 has been slightly revised from the original. The performances will be conducted by Sakari Oramo and the cast features leading Finnish opera names from Tuuli Takala to Anu Komsi, Tuomas Katajala, and Mika Kares.
STEAM SHIPS, NATIONAL PARKS AND LAKE SCENERY
The lake scenery of the Savonlinna region is spectacular, and its national parks rival Lapland in beauty. Accommodation in Savonlinna often combines stunning lake views and a town centre location. Olavinlinna, too, is within walking distance, and cruise ships stop at the castle jetty before performances.
The Savonlinna Opera Festival is a tantalising experience for the body and the mind, a day of activities followed by world-class opera. Besides Romeo and Juliet and The Magic Flute, the summer 2023 repertoire also comprises The Barber of Seville. The final week will feature visiting performances by Theater Hagen from Germany: Fiddler on the Roof and a double bill of Finnish Outi Tarkiainen’s new opera A Room of One’s Own and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle.
About the Savonlinna Opera Festival
The Savonlinna Opera Festival is Finland’s premiere cultural event. World renowned for its high-quality opera performances and concerts, every summer it brings music lovers from across the globe to the charming lakeside city of Savonlinna. The month-long festival is held in Olavinlinna, a towering medieval castle by Finland’s largest lake. This creates a uniquely dramatic ambiance for its 70 000 visitors. Once inside, festival-goers are dazzled by classics and rarely seen works as well as world premieres and visiting productions from esteemed opera houses like La Scala and the Bolshoi Theatre.
Dramatic setting meets excellent acoustics
Built in 1475, Olavinlinna Castle is the world’s northernmost medieval castle still standing. Set on an island amidst the breathtaking beauty of Finnish Lakeland, during the festival, it’s illuminated by the white nights of the Finnish summer. Combine the castle’s extraordinary atmosphere with its excellent acoustics and covered auditorium in the courtyard, and it’s easy to see why the festival promises such an unparalleled opera experience.
A summer paradise in the Finnish Lakeland
Savonlinna is located in southeast Finland in the heart of the Finnish Lakeland, Europe’s largest lake district. Built on a series of islands, the city is known for its tumultuous history near the Finnish border and its rugged nature. As a visitor, you can explore the area’s abundance of lakes, forests and wildlife, such as Lake Saimaa’s rare species of freshwater seal, the Saimaa ringed seal.
One of the world’s first opera festivals
When world famous Finnish soprano Aino Ackté first visited Olavinlinna Castle in 1907, she knew it would be the perfect place for an opera festival. In 1912 Ackté’s vision became a reality and the first Savonlinna Opera Festival was held that summer, making it one of the first opera festivals in the world.
The birth of the Savonlinna Opera Festival ties in closely with the emerging Finnish identity and Finland’s striving for independence at the beginning of the 20th century. Attending a political meeting in Olavinlinna Castle in 1907 (the year in which Finland democratically elected its first Parliament by universal suffrage), the Finnish soprano Aino Ackté, already famous at opera houses the world over and an ardent patriot, immediately spotted the potential of the medieval castle built in 1475 as the venue for an opera festival. The romantic castle set amid lake scenery of ‘supernatural beauty’ could not, in her opinion, fail to impress all who beheld it and was thus the perfect stage for the Finnish music just bursting into flower.
The first Opera Festival was held in summer 1912. Aino Ackté did as she had promised and turned the castle into a stronghold of operatic art. Five operas were performed in the castle over five summers – virtually all the ones so far composed in Finland. In 1930 the Festival went on to stage its first world premiere, the Singspiel Talkootanssit (The Village Dance) by Ilmari Hannikainen. The only opera by a non-Finnish composer was Charles Gounod’s Faust; a natural choice in that the leading female role of Marguerite was one in which Ackté had excelled on the world’s great opera stages. Her magnificent plans were, however, soon dashed by the First World War, the Russian Revolution, Finland’s Civil War and the ensuing economic difficulties, but news of the Festival had already reached opera lovers in other parts of the world.
The Opera Festival tradition then lay dormant for close on four decades. The first plans for its resurrection were made in the early 1960s. The Savonlinna Music Days held from 1955 onwards had introduced an opera course in 1962 and one of the teachers on the course, the Viennese Kammersänger Peter Klein, suggested that Olavinlinna Castle would be perfect for an opera-course performance. Over several summers the idea matured in the minds of not only Peter Klein but also of Savonlinna opera activists Viljo Virtanen, Pentti Savolainen and Pertti Mutka.
The ideas and plans of this Finnish-Austrian quartet became increasingly ambitious and the four finally decided on a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio with two casts: one of students on the course and the other of top Finnish soloists. The years of planning culminated in 1967 in the televised premiere of Fidelio to a packed auditorium in the castle courtyard. Honouring the occasion with his presence was the then President of Finland, Urho Kekkonen. The Savonlinna Opera Festival had made a superb come-back!
Over the years, the Savonlinna Opera Festival has grown from a one-week event into an international festival lasting a month. Each year it performs to a total audience of around 70,000, and almost 10 per cent from abroad. Savonlinna has become a byword among opera lovers the world over. Its artistic standard was already attracting widespread interest and admiration back in the 1970s, due greatly to the unstinting efforts of its Artistic Director, the world-famous bass singer Martti Talvela, to achieve the same objective as Aino Ackté in her day: to place Savonlinna on an artistic par with the great European festivals while presenting the world with Finnish opera at its very best.
