It is extremely difficult to come up with high enough praise to the Helsinki Opera Society and director Ville Saukkonen for bringing finally on stage Fredrik Pacius’s opera ”Loreley” in the Alexander Theatre. It has taken 132 years to have it again on this same stage, where it was originally seen all those years ago. The first opera of this composer of the Finnish National Anthem “Kung Karl’s jakt” (King Charles’s Hunt) is more or less regularly brought on stage, but for some mystical reason “Loreley” has not been seen since its first performances. After I had heard the opera, the reason for this negligence seemed even more mystical, since in its own context group “Loreley” is quite a good opera. There may have been some first night jitters in the performance, but as a whole the opera was quite nice.
As you can guess from the name, the story of the opera is linked to the German folk tale of Loreley. The nobleman – Otto – has bumped into Lenore, whose father makes wine and the youngsters have fallen in love. However, Otto is getting married with a noblewoman – Bertha, which he keeps a secret from Lenore. When Lenore finds out about it, she appels to the River Rhein to help her in her revenge and promises to become Rhein’s bride, if she gets this help. Otto abandons Bertha on the wedding day and becomes a bandit. He demands Lenore to become his, but both she and her father decline. Bertha has died of sorrow and Lenore becomes the bride of Rhein – Loreley.
Director Ville Saukkonen has done a superb job with the opera. He hasn’t tried to over-modernize it, but neither has he left any cobwebs in it. I especially enjoyed the light design (Janne Teivainen) of the opera. The lights made the relatively simple set design (Tinde Lappalainen) hundredfold more impressive.
Since ”Loreley” has not been performed for such a long time, I had thought that the music must be mediocre at its best, but it was actually quite good. The arias in the second act were very nice and full of feeling. I also believe that the choir parts would have been magnificent with a bigger choir, but unfortunately the choir was rather small and the individual voices were sometimes too discernible. Even a bigger orchestra than the one that played (Helsinki University Symphony Orchestra) would without doubt also have added something to the performance, but all in all the most important thing is that we finally had a chance to see this opera on stage even with a smaller crew.
When I sat in the audience in the Alexander Theatre, I could not avoid thinking about the historical context. I was sitting in the same theatre, where the opera was performed 132 years ago and also this time the performers were not the best in the country and even the fact that one of the main characters was ill was repetition. The role of Lenore was sung by Saara Kiiveri, who has wonderful voice material, but who also has so strong a vibrato that even my teeth were clattering. That was a pity, because without the vibrato she would have done an excellent job. The role of Otto was sung by Tero Harjunniemi. In the first act he still had some difficulties with higher notes, but in the second act even those started to sound a lot better. The role of Hubert, Lenore’s father, was sung quite beautifully by Kristjan Mõisnik. The small role of Bertha was sung by Kaisa Näreranta. Unfortunately she had caught a cold, but based on the little that she sung, I would say that her voice sounded really promising.
There are three performance of “Loreley” left, so I strongly recommend you to buy a ticket to one of them www.ticketmaster.fi.
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