Savonlinna Opera Festival

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Olavinlinna Castle

The Savonlinna Opera Festival is a multi-week opera festival that takes place every year in the Finnish city of Savonlinna . The venue for the large open-air presentations is the courtyard of the medieval Olavinlinna Castle , which is located in the middle of a lake and can accommodate more than 2,200 visitors in the covered auditorium. In the auditorium of the Savonlinna Hall, newly built in 2002 and designed for almost 800 spectators, other smaller concerts and events take place.

history

The opera festival was founded in 1912 by the well-known soprano Aino Ackté under the name Olavinlinna Opera Festival . The festival, which was set up as an open-air opera back then, presented exclusively Finnish works by Melartin , Oskar Merikanto and Pacius for the next three years . It was not until 1916 that a foreign opera was performed for the first time with Faust von Gounod . Ackté himself sang the role of "Marguerite", which had made her operatic debut years before. Then the event paused due to the war. In 1930 Aino Ackté gave her last performance as a soprano at the last festival for the time being.

In 1967, the Savonlinna Opera Festival was revived by opera tenor Peter Klein and has been held every July since then. In 1970 the well-known Finnish bass player Martti Talvela was won over as artistic director of the festival. Within a very short time the castle became the second most important opera stage in the country alongside the National Opera in Helsinki, 320 km away . The city quickly established itself as the venue for the internationally renowned opera festival, which now attracts over 60,000 people from all over the world every year.

In addition to numerous world premieres of Finnish operas, well-known international operas are always performed. a. Tannhäuser , Il trovatore , Salome , Die Zauberflöte , Boris Godunow , The Rape of Lucretia , Carmen , Tosca , Pimpinone . In-house productions are increasingly traveling, for example a tour through Singapore with Turandot took place in 2003 . A foreign opera house has been a guest in Olavinlinna every year since 1987. B. Mariinsky Theater , Royal Opera House and Bolshoi Theater .

For the 100th anniversary of the founding, the program included a cross-section from the hundred-year history of the festival, a first fringe festival and the second international opera singing competition .

Ville Matvejeff has been the new artistic director of the festival since 2019.

World premieres

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ operafestival.fi: Savonlinna Opera Festival - an unbelievable vision comes true ( memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on August 23, 2014) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.operafestival.fi
  2. ↑ tourfinland.de: Press release 100 Years of the Savonlinna Opera Festival 2012 (accessed on 23 August 2014)

Web links

Coordinates: 61 ° 51 ′ 50 ″  N , 28 ° 54 ′ 4 ″  E