Estonian History. A Nation Born of Shock. in the Estonia Theatre in Tallinn, the 21st of January, 2018

The opera year of 2018 started in my case with a brand new Estonian opera “Estonian History. A Nation Born of Shock.” The opera was made for the anniversary of Estonia and it is without doubt a rather unusual performance, which was also easy to guess beforehand since the early descriptions of the opera were rather peculiar. The production is a part of so called MIM-project, which is an interartistic project that has produced several performances in the past few years.

The story of the opera is a story of the birth of the Estonian nation, a crazy mixture of a meteorite that dropped to Saaremaa 800 B.C., sound waves, a church, a book written by modern Estonia’s first president Lennart Meri, an ancient Creek female explorer and the Estonian Song Festival. Acts jump back and forth in different times and places from desert to ancient Athens, to Tartu, Moscow and Saaremaa. I think the story was a sort of comedy, since the Estonian audience laughed a lot during the performance, though I did not understand even half the jokes (they obviously referred to some Estonian events that I – as a foreigner – had never even heard of).

There was all the time some background music that switched between electronic music (clacking, rustle, squeaks) and Arabic influenced tones. Most of the performance was spoken and there were only a few soloist songs and a bit more songs by the opera chorus. It may be a bit stretched to call this production an opera, but it was pretty interesting to see – just after the Finnish anniversary – how the Estonians celebrate their anniversary. The music of the opera was, as such, quite interesting and suited the performance.

Even though this opera was made for the 100^th anniversary of Estonia, interestingly enough, Finland also was involved. In the middle of the performance a voice started reading the Finnish national epic “Kalevala” in Finnish. I honestly didn’t first believe my ears, when the language changed, but I was only a bit confused, how I suddenly started to understand Estonian so well (that part was without any translation in the texting machine).

MIM-project had invested especially much on the costumes, set design and lights and I really liked them. Especially the battle between the local Saaremaa people and the crusaders was spectacular.

There were so few songs in the performance that it is very difficult to say anything about them, except that the singers did quite well. Especially Juuli Lill in the role of Pythea was good.  


And a short commercial in the end of this story. Last August I saw Jukka Linkola's opera Abraham's banquet in Liminka about which I also wrote in my blog. Now the opera is coming to Helsinki! So for those of you, who would like to see it and travelling to Liminka was too much, set course towards Helsinki Music Centre on the 22nd/23rd of February.