23.07.2012
Jari Hämäläinen Talks about Savonlinna in St. Petersburg
Jari Hämäläinen, Artistic Director of the Savonlinna Opera Festival, is preparing for a gala concert at the Mikhailovsky Theatre on 6 March to celebrate the festival’s centenary.
"I have a theory that selecting artists for concerts and opera productions is much like choosing a wine: it is easy to buy a well-known wine for a high price. However, that way you miss some brands which might not be so famous, but prove interesting nevertheless. As the festival’s Artistic Director, I attend many auditions and performances by opera singers all over the world, and I often invite interesting performers who are not yet household names. One of these is the Hungarian soprano Csilla Boross, who is coming to St. Petersburg in March and will make her debut at Savonlinna this summer.
“The atmosphere of a festival and that of a tour concert in a theatre are quite different. The main thing is that the music remains as sublime as ever. The Savonlinna Festival is attractive to many because of its unusual location: it is held in the medieval Olavinlinna Castle, surrounded by forests and lakes. The Mikhailovsky Theatre has its own charm, and I am sure that the excerpts from famous operas that I have included in the programme will sound wonderful here. I hope that the festival choir will give its best; it has a well-deserved reputation as one of the world’s finest choirs.
“I will be very pleased to see people from St. Petersburg in the festival audience at Savonlinna this summer. In my view, Finnish composers very subtly convey the sense of our link with nature — it is one of the principal themes in their works. This year at Savonlinna we are staging the premiere of Kimmo Hakola’s opera La Fenice, which reveals the link between Finnish music and the world’s operatic tradition. It is a postmodernist work that cites from various operas in the international repertoire”.
"I have a theory that selecting artists for concerts and opera productions is much like choosing a wine: it is easy to buy a well-known wine for a high price. However, that way you miss some brands which might not be so famous, but prove interesting nevertheless. As the festival’s Artistic Director, I attend many auditions and performances by opera singers all over the world, and I often invite interesting performers who are not yet household names. One of these is the Hungarian soprano Csilla Boross, who is coming to St. Petersburg in March and will make her debut at Savonlinna this summer.
“The atmosphere of a festival and that of a tour concert in a theatre are quite different. The main thing is that the music remains as sublime as ever. The Savonlinna Festival is attractive to many because of its unusual location: it is held in the medieval Olavinlinna Castle, surrounded by forests and lakes. The Mikhailovsky Theatre has its own charm, and I am sure that the excerpts from famous operas that I have included in the programme will sound wonderful here. I hope that the festival choir will give its best; it has a well-deserved reputation as one of the world’s finest choirs.
“I will be very pleased to see people from St. Petersburg in the festival audience at Savonlinna this summer. In my view, Finnish composers very subtly convey the sense of our link with nature — it is one of the principal themes in their works. This year at Savonlinna we are staging the premiere of Kimmo Hakola’s opera La Fenice, which reveals the link between Finnish music and the world’s operatic tradition. It is a postmodernist work that cites from various operas in the international repertoire”.
