Most people connect Art Centre Salmela to visual arts, but actually a lot of music is also performed there and this year Arto Paju had composed an opera called Wiipuri for Salmela. His task had been rather great, since the length of the opera was full three hours with interval.
The opera follows the life of Armas (baritone Ville Rusanen)
and his wife Anna-Maria (soprano Hanna Hoikkala) from Midsummer 1936 to Midsummer
1944, when Viipuri was lost in the war to the Soviet Union. Armas and Anna-Maria
meet, fall in love, get married, Armas has to go to the front, gets wounded, Viipuri
is lost in the Winter War, in the Continuation War Finns return to Viipuri, Armas
ends up on the front again, Viipuri is lost now forever and in the last days of
the war Armas is killed.
There were only two other singers in the opera: Mikael
Konttinen and Bianca Morales and the Laurentius Choir. Even though on the
surface the opera tells the story of Armas and Anna-Maria, in reality the main
role is held by the city of Viipuri – hometown, that is fought over, from which
people flee, to which they return and that is lost.
Paju had composed
very versatile music to the opera. Personally, I actually liked most the
jazz style songs sung by Bianca Morales. They expressed the energetic and
celebrating atmosphere of the city beautifully. The orchestra also played well (despite
the warm weather). Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the performance of
the choir, whose singing often totally disappeared. Their sound reinforcement
system was horrible, and the audience would have needed either texting or the
libretto to be able to grasp what they sang.
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