Strong material, captivating stories, and colorful orchestrations paired together with text in which the music adds an enriching additional layer - this is what distinguishes the music theatre works of Aulis Sallinen.
Sallinen is one of the highest regarded Finnish opera composers, having had a decisive influence on the Finnish theatre landscape, and whose works are being performed across international stages.

Aulis Sallinen © FIMIC-MK

Below is an overview of 5 of his operas ranging from great literary opera to socially critical music theatre.

King Lear (1999) 2 hr 50'

"[The opera King Lear] makes it clear that Shakespeare's play is indeed quintessential operatic material. And it is a tribute to Sallinen's skill as a musical dramatist that this was all so readily apparent. His "King Lear" makes for gripping musical theater." – George W. Loomis, Musical America.com (21st September 2000)

With King Lear, Sallinen presents his opera almost 20 years after Aribert Reimann's work of the same name; considered one of the most successful contemporary operas, a very special version of the famous Shakespearean tragedy. Based on a libretto written by himself, he elaborates the poetic aspects of the story and draws portraits of his characters full of character.

The Palace (1993) 2 hr

"The music of The Palace is unnervingly attractive: easy on the ear but seriously worked and laced with tension. It is good to hear and grateful to sing, and draws full-blooded performances from the cast" – Michael White, The Independent (on Sunday 1st July 1995)

The libretto by Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Irene Dische is a witty and wicked parable about power and love. Based on the plot and the characters of Mozart's "Abduction", the opera demonstrates how unstable and endangered the rule of a pasha is. It becomes obvious how the mechanisms of maintaining power manifest themselves in increasingly independent rituals. In the end, the power ritual chooses its own interchangeable protagonists.

Kullervo (1988) 2 hr 25'

“This is an opera that can get under the skin; throughout a sort of combination of international theatre and socially critical folk theatre, brutal and contemporary, as myths often are.
Sallinen exerts a compelling, almost eerie, influence with a strictly functional music that serves only the drama and its intensification.” – Alfred Zimmerlin, Neue Zuercher Zeitung (2nd February 2006)

The fourth opera Kullervo is a dark approach to the Finnish national epic Kalevala. The libretto, written by Sallinen himself, is based on the Finnish Kullervo drama by Aleksis Kivi. Kullervo depicts a pagan-primitive world in which families wage war against each other unhindered by any legal system and conflicts are not resolved through negotiation, but instead lead to an endless cycle of revenge and vengeance. Kullervo is a murderer who confesses, "I never wanted to be what I am now." But what makes him a murderer? That is one of the central questions of the opera.

Kullervo is a large choral opera in which the entire opera ensemble gets its share.

View an excerpt of the production by Savonlinna Opera Festival
The King goes forth to France (1983) 2 hr 10'

"Aulis Sallinen’s opera, “The King Goes Forth to France”, with its curious mix of operatic convention coupled with almost Monty Python-esque satire, and set to an engagingly lyrical and generous score, gives young singers opportunities to shine, and an orchestra something to really get its teeth into." – Alexander Campbell, classicalsource.com (1st March 2009)

The King goes Forth to France is so surreal, so artificial and absurd that it is made for music theatre. It is laid out like a fantastic fairy tale for adults about power and war, showing with sharp tongue and subtly worked music how the circumstances of time turn a regent into a cruel, unpredictable madman of power.

The Red Line ('Punainen Viiva') (1978) 1 hr 55'

"Sallinen's musical language is as direct and deceptively simple as before: bare, pithy melodic motives, a fondness for simple intervals…frequent recourse to speech or monotone chanting, hints of folk-song, march or psalm-tone, all combined with a fine ear for atmosphere and scene-painting…his style is his own…giving real depth and warmth to [the] characters." – Gramophone

The Red Line is a socially critical opera. The focus lies on the individual on the fringes of society, who, in the field of tension between political promises and individual hope for a better life, remains at the mercy of his fate.

 

(April 2020)