Rita in the Space for Free Arts in Helsinki, the 9th of April, 2018

Rita, one of Gaetano Donizetti’s short operas, has not been performed before in Finland. Donizetti himself did not see it either during his lifetime, since its first performance took place only after his death, in 1860. 

Rita is the mistress of a small inn and in her second marriage with Beppe. Rita’s first husband, who used to hit her, died at sea. Because Rita does not want to be oppressed anymore, so she has started hitting Beppo. The first husband, Gasparo, did not die, but returns to get Rita’s death certificate, since he has thought she died in a fire. Now the husbands start quarrelling about who will have to stay married to Rita. After various competitions Gasparo gets to rip the marriage certificate and Beppe and Rita continue their marriage happily and committed to non-violence.

Juulia Tapola (director) has created a small jewel of an opera, which made the audience laugh out loud (if you can ever say that domestic violence is funny). All the singing parts were sung in Italian, but the spoken dialogues were a nice mixture of Finnish and Swedish. This solution worked surprisingly well and the dialogue, that the work group had written based on Linnea Kiukka’s translation, brought the slightly outdated opera to modern era. The performance was held in the Space for Free Arts, that is in an air-raid shelter in Sörnäinen (in Helsinki), and the Italian style set design and a bit caricature type costume design (Juulia Tapola and the work group) suited both the opera and the surroundings.   

The opera lasted a bit over an hour and it had only four persons: Rita (Aurora Marthens), Beppe (Matias Haakana), Gasparo (Tiitus Ylipää) and Bortolina – a spoken role (Stella Laine). An orchestra of eight musicians conducted by Emilia Hoving was responsible for the music. Donizetti’s music was charming and even though the orchestra was rather small, it was just right for such a small room as this corner of the shelter.

The singers made nice, funny performances. The voice of Aurora Marthens rang beautifully, though the ”attacks” of laugher in the beginning were rather too frequent. Matias Haakana’s voice was a bit wobbly in the beginning, but in the end he turned into a rather sure footed (read: voiced) hero. Thinking back his metamorphosis almost suited the opera’s story of a man who turns from the lummox of a man (Rita’s words, not mine) to nice husband material. Tiitus Ylipää was in my opinion the funniest character of the evening, even though in real life he would have been a true jerk. Ylipää both acted well and sung nicely. The fake chest hair was a cherry on the cake. Stella Laine’s waitress Bortolina was also an excellent performance.

So, I definitely need to thank the work group for bringing this, unseen in Finland, opera to stage. It is great that young artists have the energy and ambition to take risks and show different types of work to larger audiences.