Sofia of Kitusuo in the Mänttä ice rink, the 1st of July, 2017

SOFIA OF KITUSUO

 

The city of Mänttä-Vilppula showed folk opera Sofia of Kitusuo in the indoor ice rink of Mänttä. We are talking here about a huge effort from volunteers in the region (also some professionals were involved). The story is set in 1918 and it tells the short but dramatic love story of the grandparents of the librettist and producer Seppo and Tapani Parkkinen: Sofia of Kitusuo and Tatar Paul Karakulka, serving in the Russian army.

 

Sofia of Kitusuo as a production is perhaps more theatre than opera. Even though the composers are said to be Jorma Panula and Erlend Jantsikene (who was also the conductor of the piece), a considerable part of the music is actually old music: e.g. songs of the white and reds and the opera even ends with Sibelius’s Finlandia. And you must also remember that there is a lot of talking in this opera.

 

But if you ignore that fact that this is in my opinion a folk opera only in the broad sense of the word, it is definitely a huge effort from the volunteers who have taken part in it. The background of the story is one of most important times of the Finnish history, the civil war, when Finns fought against other Finns. In the middle of this all, two people from different cultures fell in love and the relationship is broken by the inevitable historical events.

 

The main characters of the opera were professionals. My personal favourite was Olli Tuovinen, who sang the role of Paul Karakulka. It is a pity that he actually did not get a chance to sing that much.  There were also quite a lot (serious) amateurs in the opera, out of which my favourite was Merja Kääriäinen who sang the role of the Helmi Virta. What a gutsy character! I also liked the voice of Taisto Polvi as Valte Rimpi a lot. Unfortunately the acoustics of the ice rink was not very good even with sound reinforcement system. The reinforcement was not actually working that well; sometimes the chorus parts were mushy and every now and then in the solo parts the reinforcement started working only in the third bar.  

 

But all in all the performance was charming, deeply knit with the local history and it suited well as a summer weekend entertainment. The whole project must have required a lot of work, but hopefully that does not prevent similar performances elsewhere and in future summers.