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The Salzburg of the North: The Savolinna Opera Festival
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13217 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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10 / 1987 |
1,702 Words |
| Author
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Robert Levine
Robert Levine is a travel writer who lives in New York. |
A little over two hundred miles northeast of Helsinki, Finland, sits a glorious little town of thirty thousand called Savolinna. Located in the heart of the Saimaa lake district, with its green hills, spectacular ridges, and scores of islands, capes, and caves, Savolinna is a feast for the eyes. During the month of July, when the Savolinna Opera Festival is in full swing, it is also a feast for the ears.
The festival, one of Europe's oldest, was organized by the Finnish soprano Aino Ackte in 1912. Although within a few years the festival's reputation had spread throughout Europe, in 1930 the festival had to be abandoned when financial difficulties grew overwhelming. It was revived in the late 1960s and attained its present international stature in the 1970s, when the great Finnish bass Martti Talvela held the position of artistic director. This past July, another Finn, baritone Walton Grunroos, was named the new artistic director, and it will be his task to maintain the high standards. The festival is now an annual event of such superb artistic caliber that it has been referred to as "The Salzburg of the North."
The setting for the opera performances - the courtyard of the fifteenth-century Olavinlinna Castle - is magnificent. Twenty-five hundred seats face a constructed stage, which is close to ninety feet wide and barely thirty feet deep. The backdrop is a stone wall fifty feet high with a small arch at floor level on the left and a huge arch, twenty-five feet up, at stage right. There is a steep stone staircase at either end of the stage platform. Naturally, there is no proscenium and nowhere to set lighting equipment. The latter problem is solved by placing men and lights on the parapets around the courtyard - the same parapets that used to hold soldiers with weapons to ward off invading forces. A less determined people might have left well enough alone and remained content with having the best-preserved fifteenth-century fortress in the North countries, but the Finns, accustomed as they are to fighting (or at least coming to terms with) nature six long months a year, took the conversion of the courtyard as a challenge. They have succeeded brilliantly, and the designers and directors they have hired from around the globe have also shown themselves to be up to the task. To call the Savolinna experience dramatic is a gross understatement.
This summer's festival included Verdi's Aida, Mozart's The Magic Flute, Sallinen's The King Goes Forth to France, Mussorgsky's Khovanschina, and Bizet's Carmen, in addition to dozens of concerts and recitals in the town cathedral, nearby churches, and concert halls. I attended the
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