I have so far thought that opera is relatively advertisement free, since you usually see advertisements maximum only in the programme leaflet. But I have now seen both the advertisement films before the performance (so familiar from cinema!) and blatant product placement in Jukka Linkola’s opera “Minna’s Heaven” in the Kuopio Music Centre. It felt a bit odd, and no effort was made to camouflage the product placement somehow as a smooth part of the opera, but of course the sponsors got what they had paid for.
”Minna’s Heaven”
tells about the author Minna Canth, but not about her life as usually in books,
plays or operas, but about her life after death in Heaven. There she
meets some other important characters in the Finnish cultural life at her time,
like J.V. Snellman, Juhani Aho and Venny Soldan-Brofeldt and there are even
three astral spirits in the opera.
I liked the music of the opera, but once again the libretto (director
Veera Airas) was extremely weak. Forced
rhyming normally destroys any story. 3D-projections were used very professionally,
and costume design (Katri Niskanen, Hanna Kettunen and Laura Vilagi) was
beautiful.
Soprano Marjukka Tepponen, who sang the role of Minna Canth,
was excellent and the retired singers: baritone Esa Ruuttunen (J.V. Snellman) and
mezzosoprano Marjatta Airas (Venny Soldan-Brofeldt) sang also very well. The
opera itself was a positive experience and worth a trip to Kuopio and it is, of
course, also kind of entertaining to try to remember the most terrible rhymes
of the libretto after the opera.
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