Kari Tikka’s new opera ”Rakkaus on väkevä kuin kuomena” (Love is mighty as death) has been for various reasons delayed several times, but now it was finally brought to stage in the Alexander Theatre in Helsinki.
The theme of the opera is – just as the name says –
love. The story begins with the wedding of Adam and Eve, that is followed by
destruction, sorrow and suffering, and it ends with harmony and love. So, the
story line is perhaps not quite straightforward, but Tikka’s operas often
contain symbols and his followers know not to expect simple stories.
The music of the opera is based in repetition. The singers
hadn’t had any need to learn tons of lines, since the same text was repeated
and repeated and at times the lyrics were just sounds. And, of course, the music
contained a couple of ear worms that are so typical to Tikka. To me the soloist
of the evening all performed equally well, so this time I cannot think of any
particular favourites. On the other hand, I cannot say that anyone did worse
than the others, so it was actually an amazingly harmonious set of singers.
In my eyes the true main character of the opera was
the theme – love. Even though at times the repetition caused a feeling that
this is like pounding a bug with a sledgehammer, at its most beautiful the
opera was extremely intensive and surely made more than one spectator ponder
about the nature of love.
The second main character in my opinion was the splendid
set and costume design by Anna Kontek. The set design consisted of simple stair
blocks, whose moving around was an act of its own (albeit sometimes – perhaps unintentionally
– almost humoristic). I really liked the costume design. The chorus in its
colourless dresses acted as a background to the strong colours of most of the soloists.
Even the hair styles were in the same colours. An especially lovely detail was
Aki Alamikkotervo’s, admittedly sparse, blue hair. All in all, the opera was
definitely worth seeing.
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