THE AWAKENING
Maija Ruuskanen’s
opera The Awakening was performed in musical theatre Kapsäkki. The opera is
based on thoughts of Paavo Ruotsalainen, the best know preacher of the
revivalist movement, called the Awakened. A few times I noticed that I was
pondering, if this really an opera, but who cares, since it was anyway musical
theatre.
The opera is composed
to a choir, a baritone and a saxophone quartet. The solution is a bit unusual,
but it worked in my opinion. There were actually two choirs: Philomela and The
Choir of Awakened Youth. Philomela is a very good choir and the member of the
Academic Saxophone Quartet were fine musicians. At some points it actually felt
as if the instruments were one human voice more in the opera.
But the most I liked
the libretto. The uppermost theme was, truth to be told, about mercy, but the
spiritual angst of Paavo Ruotsalainen felt very real. Jussi Lehtipuu acted his
role really well, though I have to admit that I wasn’t quite sure all the time
if he was vocally the best choice to sing the role of Paavo. One more big plus
was that it was really easy to understand the words, so even though there was a
libretto included to the programme, it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
Setting of the opera
was very simple, but good, and the dresses were not very posh either, but of
course they shouldn’t be when we are talking about a revivalist movement. Black
and blue as the only two colours in the dresses worked well.
I can recommend this
production to everybody who thinks about the great themes of faith, because the
atmosphere in the work was very intense and worth feeling.
 |
| The Academic Saxophone Quartet plus Tuomas Timonen |
 |
| Jussi Lehtipuu and choir members |
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti