Opera | The description of family hell skillfully hits the summer opera discussion

Premiere of Heinz-Juhani Hofmann’s opera Minä/Minä/Minä at the Helsinki Opera Summer at the Aleksanteri Theater on August 22.

Daughter snapping selfies and working out compulsively. If the weight has increased since the last weigh-in, he has previously punished himself.

Fortunately, there are no new scars on the arms. And he hasn’t hit his mother since the last ward episode.

Instead, the violence erupts into nauseating fantasies. In them, the daughter bites off a piece of the ear of a mocking little child and rants in detail about killing a beggar on a nearby street or even a pet dog.

The mother tries to calm her daughter with mental health problems and keeps the scenes.

Until they collapse.

Composer and librettist Heinz-Juhani Hofmann describes I/I/I– family hell again in the opera.

The human heart handled sexual abuse of a child and … father, father father unpacked the traumawhose authoritarian father was the director of the Cantores Minores boys’ choir in the later years Heinz Hofmann caused to his son.

So now it’s the turn of the mother (actress Pauliina Palo) and daughter (soprano Annika Fuhrmann) duel.

With that in mind, both Palo and Fuhrmann are the next artistic directors of Juhlaviikkoi by Johanna Freundlich very good in precise steering.

Musically Hofmann again relies on skillfully rhythmic spoken vocals, from which bursts from time to time more precisely marked tonal levels and even Hassler’s Melodywhich JS Bach used In the Matthew Passion and Paul Simon American Tune in the song.

Only the parts of the singer and actor are marked in the score. They are supported by a toned electronic part, whose soundscapes take you deeper into anxiety and momentary calms.

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These depictions of family hell are powerful and important contemporary opera.

Hofmann gets, as usual, wild tension and a lot of content into the approximately one-hour work.

The cause of the daughter’s problems remains partly open, but it is made clear that social media does not reduce the problems.

Crisis news also plays its part, which arouses a backlash in the daughter:

“I’m first on the side of Israel and then on the side of Palestine: I strain my brain for the moment it takes to swipe up between Fitness and Lifestyle videos. Let them just kill each other, as long as they don’t bring their crap into my backyard.”

In the end, the mother can’t stand her daughter’s self-centered and violent words.

“You’re just throwing up all that ugly, superficial, two-dimensional world view on me, and I should just swallow it. It is poison.”

I can well imagine that some listeners will have a similar reaction to Hofmann’s harsh themes.

But the composer’s production is of course always more than that, from early on Karelian – life, Kekkonen and actions – from the opera To the square.

And these depictions of family hell are also strong and important contemporary opera.

Today this summer there has been another discussion about the masculinity and old age of the opera world.

For this discussion I/I/I and size Helsinki Opera Summer Program in Aleksanteri’s theater brings an excellent addition.

The conversation started when the writer Marissa Mehr spoke In an interview with HS about opera as a “mummified art form” and wished opera houses a theme season for female composers, conductors and conductors.

It’s always good when people under forty want to shake up the institutions. And institutions can certainly roar back, like the chief conductor of the National Opera Hannu Lintu56, did in his public Facebook commentin which he condemned Mehr’s criticism as “superficial”. (Mehr discusses his own theses at length in his new book).

Lintu continued: most of the dozens of female captains he knows “want to lead the same ones Favorite drinks, Tristans, Figaros and Fidelias” and the majority of female directors “burn with the desire to direct the cornerstones of traditional opera”.

The arguments should be read in their entirety, but in these respects the Helsinki opera summer is a direct blow to both arguments.

The summer of opera responds to Mehr’s criticism by being anything but “mummified” with its novelties and works left in the swamp, such as Tauno Marttinen Burnt orange.

And for Linnu, the opera summer will be a reminder that, fortunately, we still have conductors and conductors of all genders who “burn with the desire” to do more than “cornerstones of traditional opera”.

Me/Me/Me at the Aleksanteri theater also on August 24 and 25 at 7 p.m. Composition and libretto: Heinz-Juhani Hofmann. Directed by: Johanna Freundlich. Visual design: Ninja Pasanen. Sound designer: Tuisku Hillilä. The roles are played by Annika Fuhrmann, soprano and Pauliina Palo, actress.