Scenes from Goethe's Faust in Kaapelitehdas, the 23rd of August, 2019

This year Helsinki Festival pampered the audience with big pieces. First, they had Schönberg’s cantate “Gurrelieder” in the Helsinki Music Centre and then they had Robert Schumann’s oratorio “Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” in Kaapelitehdas.

The story of Faust is probably known to most people. Faust sells his soul to the devil for worldly success and that has its consequences. Jussi Nikkilä’s production was rather modernized. I am not quite sure if big industrial style, box-shaped room like the one in Kaapelitehdas is the best possible place to perform this piece. I sat on floor level and I saw the whole performance really well and could hear it well, too, at least most of the time. But somehow, when the soloist sang from the balcony, their voices tended to disappear. Despite all that, I was very happy that we had a chance to see this work in Finland.

Nikkilä’s version was a bit too “full”. Soloists sang first in front of the orchestra and after intermission from the balcony. Behind the orchestra the actors acted the play without speech (the came from time to time to act in front of the orchestra, too) and behind them there was a video playing the story from another angle. The choir(s) sang their part from the balcony. I have to admit that I was not able to follow all this all the time, so after the ouverture I almost stopped watching the video. I didn’t have time to follow the actors all the time, either, even though I tried to follow the superb Sanna-Kaisa Palo as the devil whenever I could. So, I mostly concentrated on following the orchestra and the soloists.

And they definitely were worth following. The Radio Symphony Orchestra alone with conductor Hannu Lintu would have been worth the ticket, but in addition to that the group of soloists of the evening were excellent. Many of the soloist had more than one role to sing, but it was no hindrance. This time I have to pick up more than one favorite among the soloists. Helena Juntunen was once again fantastic. You can only envy her ability to make the roles hers. Soile Isokoski is still an excellent singer and I was really happy that Maximilian Schmitt, who had fallen ill, had been substituted by my favorite Tuomas Katajala. I also liked Markus Suihkonen’s performance a lot. I hope that Helsinki Festival will continue to bring on stage such wonderful works!