Olavinlinna Castle 26 July 2023 - Bluebeard’s Castle & A Room of One's Own | GoComGo.com

Bluebeard’s Castle & A Room of One's Own

Olavinlinna Castle, Savonlinna, Finland
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Wednesday 26 July 2023
7 PM
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Important Info
Type: Opera
City: Savonlinna, Finland
Starts at: 19:00
Duration: 2h 30min
Sung in: Hungarian
Titles in: Finnish,English

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Festival

Savonlinna Opera Festival 2023

An opera festival in the Finnish summer is an opportunity to enjoy not only high-quality opera performances but also wonderfully light July nights and Nordic nature. The small town of Savonlinna is full of life in July. The medieval Olavinlinna castle on the shore of the famous Lake Saimaa plays host to the festival, which can be reached from Helsinki by train and plane. Visiting artists at Savonlinna Opera Festival in summer 2023 include Lisette Oropesa, Frédéric Antoun, and conductor Sakari Oramo. In 2023 the Savonlinna Opera Festival will take place from 1 to 30 July 2023.

Overview

The mystic ambiance begins in the evening’s first chamber opera. Bluebeard’s Castle is a dreamlike psychological drama, to which the Hungarian language gives added vivacity of sound.

The orchestra weaves the fabric of the thriller. Only two characters are seen onstage: the duke and the enamoured Judith, who despite being told not to, opens one locked door after another. These doors lead to the duke’s secrets, and his tormented soul.

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” Virginia Woolf claimed in her classic work A Room of One’s Own in 1929.

Based on Woolf’s text, the essay-like A Room of One’s Own is a women’s opera about women. It explores the female role in society, questioning why women have been overshadowed by men. Judith Shakespeare, the invented sister of the famous playwright, is just as talented and hard-working as William, but she has no career prospects because of her gender.

Outi Tarkiainen is one of today’s most talked about composers in Finland. She had her international career breakthrough at the BBC Proms in London in 2018. This is her first opera, which was commissioned by Theater Hagen and had its world premiere in Hagen in May 2022.

The visiting performances in Olavinlinna are the opera’s Finnish premiere.

The visiting opera company this summer is Theater Hagen from the Ruhr region in Germany. The theatre is located in the midst of large cities in an area with a broad opera offering. Theater Hagen stands out from the crowd with its fresh, inventive repertoire.

History
Premiere of this production: 24 May 1918, Royal Hungarian Opera House, Budapest

Bluebeard's Castle is a one-act expressionist opera by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The libretto was written by Béla Balázs, a poet and friend of the composer, and is written in Hungarian, based on the French literary tale La Barbe bleue by Charles Perrault. The opera lasts only a little over an hour and there are only two singing characters onstage: Bluebeard (Kékszakállú), and his new wife Judith (Judit); the two have just eloped and Judith is coming home to Bluebeard's castle for the first time.

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf, first published in September 1929. The work is based on two lectures Woolf delivered in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, women's colleges at the University of Cambridge.

Synopsis

Place: A huge, dark hall in a castle, with seven locked doors.
Time: Not defined.

Judith and Bluebeard arrive at his castle, which is all dark. Bluebeard asks Judith if she wants to stay and even offers her an opportunity to leave, but she decides to stay. Judith insists that all the doors be opened, to allow light to enter into the forbidding interior, insisting further that her demands are based on her love for Bluebeard. Bluebeard refuses, saying that there are private places not to be explored by others, and asking Judith to love him but ask no questions. Judith persists, and eventually prevails over his resistance.

The first door opens to reveal a torture chamber, stained with blood. Repelled, but then intrigued, Judith pushes on. Behind the second door is a storehouse of weapons, and behind the third a storehouse of riches. Bluebeard urges her on. Behind the fourth door is a secret garden of great beauty; behind the fifth, a window onto Bluebeard's vast kingdom. All is now sunlit, but blood has stained the riches, watered the garden, and grim clouds throw blood-red shadows over Bluebeard's kingdom.

Bluebeard pleads with her to stop: the castle is as bright as it can get, and will not get any brighter, but Judith refuses to be stopped after coming this far, and opens the penultimate sixth door, as a shadow passes over the castle. This is the first room that has not been somehow stained with blood; a silent silvery lake is all that lies within, "a lake of tears". Bluebeard begs Judith to simply love him, and ask no more questions. The last door must be shut forever. But she persists, asking him about his former wives, and then accusing him of having murdered them, suggesting that their blood was the blood everywhere, that their tears were those that filled the lake, and that their bodies lie behind the last door. At this, Bluebeard hands over the last key.

Behind the door are Bluebeard's three former wives, but still alive, dressed in crowns and jewellery. They emerge silently, and Bluebeard, overcome with emotion, prostrates himself before them and praises each in turn (as his wives of dawn, midday and dusk), finally turning to Judith and beginning to praise her as his fourth wife (of the night). She is horrified and begs him to stop, but it is too late. He dresses her in the jewellery they wear, which she finds exceedingly heavy. Her head drooping under the weight, she follows the other wives along a beam of moonlight through the seventh door. It closes behind her, and Bluebeard is left alone as all fades to total darkness.

Venue Info

Olavinlinna Castle - Savonlinna
Location   Olavinkatu 27

During it’s history the Olavinlinna Castle has been the state border fortress for both Swedes and Russians. The construction work for Saint Olaf’s Castle started in 1475, when a Danish born knight Erik Akselinpoika Tott decided to build a great fortress to protect the strategically important Savo region. The castle was to ward off Russian’s attacks coming from the east and thus ensure that the Savo region will stay under the Swedish Crown. Olavinlinna Castle’s history is a mixture of swords clashing in the middle ages, cannons rumbleing and every day chores inside the castle’s walls.

In 1975 after great renovation works the Olavinlinna Castle re-opened it’s renovated spaces and nowadays Olavinlinna Castle is open for public all year around. The castle’s museom showcases materials that were either found from the castle or are somehow related to it’s history. The orthodox museum has icons and other religous articles both from Finland and Russia. Public events and guided tours to the castle are held in many languages, in summer and in winter. Castle’s multiple spaces are rentable and host many different kinds of events and celebrations. Olavinlinna Castle with it’s over 100 000 visitors a year is the main tourist attraction in Savonlinna.

The first Opera Festival was held in summer 1912. Attending a political meeting in Olavinlinna Castle in 1907, the Finnish soprano Aino Ackté, already famous at opera houses the world over and an ardent patriot, immediately spotted the potential of the medieval castle built in 1475 as the venue for an opera festival. The romantic castle set amid lake scenery of ‘supernatural beauty’ could not, in her opinion, fail to impress all who beheld it and was thus the perfect stage for the Finnish music just bursting into flower. Nowadays the auditorium is covered and has 2264 seats.

Important Info
Type: Opera
City: Savonlinna, Finland
Starts at: 19:00
Duration: 2h 30min
Sung in: Hungarian
Titles in: Finnish,English
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