The year 2012 is one for great celebration at the Savonlinna Opera Festival. For 100 years will have passed since Aino Ackté, the most illustrious Finnish soprano of her day and a fervent patriot, arranged the first opera festival in what were then still the “ruins” of Olavinlinna Castle. Now, a century later, the Castle has been restored and transformed into one of the most unique opera stages in the world, and one in which the unsurpassed atmosphere, first-class performances and magnificent acoustics guarantee an opera experience to remember for ever after.

The programme for the jubilee 2012 season is an interesting mixture of new and traditional, Finnish and international. Representing tradition are three of the most legendary and most popular productions in the Savonlinna Festival’s history: August Everding’s direction of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Ilkka Bäckman’s version of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, and András Mikó’s vision of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. These three classics will be matched with two world premieres: Kimmo Hakola’s La Fenice and the first ever opera born on the Internet and created by an online community: Free Will. The online community is devising the libretto, writing the music in collaboration with Finnish composer Markus Fagerudd and designing the sets and costumes.

The season begins with a grand gala, the programme for which spans the entire 100-year history of the Savonlinna Opera Festival. Performing at this gala will be leading soloists of the 2012 season, the Savonlinna Opera Festival Orchestra and Choir.

The other two concerts for the season will likewise be a blend of Finnish and international at their very finest: soprano Karita Mattila – today’s Aino Ackté – and the Apocalyptica cello ensemble will further enrich the varied programme, as befits a 100th anniversary.

Another highlight of the jubilee year is the Savonlinna Opera Festival’s second International Singing Competition, bringing the world’s most talented young singers, the stars of the future, to the town of Savonlinna in July.

The guest opera house in the jubilee season comes from Oslo and is one of the most interesting opera companies in all Europe at the moment. The magnificent modern opera house to which the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet moved a couple of years ago has been a tremendous source of artistic and operational inspiration. Britten’s Peter Grimes and Kverndokk’s The fourth Watch of the Night (Den fjerde nattevakt) will provide the perfect ending to a Savonlinna Opera Festival season featuring repertoire of unprecedented richness and variety.

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Savonlinna Hall

Olavinlinna Castle

The birth of the Savonlinna Opera Festival ties in closely with the emerging Finnish identity and Finland’s striving for independence at the beginning of the 20th century. Attending a patriotic 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 presenting the Finnish music just bursting into flower.

The first opera festival was held in 1912. Aino Ackté did as she had promised and turned the castle into a stronghold of operatic art. During the five summers she was able to arrange her festival, she staged four Finnish operas. The only opera by a non-Finnish composer was Gounod’s Faust, with Ackté herself excelling in the leading female role of Marguerite. Her magnificent plans were, however, soon dashed by the First World War, the Russian Revolution, Finland’s Civil War and the ensuing economic difficulties, but news of the festival had already reached opera lovers in other parts of the world.

The opera festival tradition then lay dormant for close on four decades. In 1967 the festival came to life again when the Savonlinna Music Days that had been held for a decade or more decided to arrange an opera course for young singers. The leader of the course hit on the idea of staging Beethoven’s Fidelio in the castle courtyard. The performance was a tremendous success, its cast included singers of international repute in addition to the students, and the premiere of Fidelio on July 16, 1967 is nowadays regarded as the start of the present Festival.

Over the years the Savonlinna Opera Festival has grown from a one-week event into an international festival lasting a month. Each year it performs to a total audience of around 60,000, a good 10 per cent from abroad. Savonlinna has become a byword among opera lovers the world over. Its artistic standard was already attracting widespread interest and admiration back in the 1970s, due greatly to the uncompromising efforts of its Artistic Director, the world-famous bass singer Martti Talvela, to achieve the same objective as Aino Ackté in her day: to place Savonlinna on an artistic par with the great European festivals while presenting the world with Finnish opera at its very best.

Ten operas have been premiered at the Savonlinna Opera Festival since 1967: The Horseman (1975), The King Goes Forth To France (1984, commissioned jointly by Covent Garden and the BBC) and The Palace (1995) by Aulis Sallinen, The Knife (1989) by Paavo Heininen, Aleksis Kivi (1997) by Einojuhani Rautavaara, The Age Of Dreams (2000) by Herman Rechberger, Olli Kortekangas and Kalevi Aho and Daddy’s Girl by Olli Kortekangas (2007). In summer 2004 the Festival took a significant artistic step on staging the family opera The Canine Kalevala by Jaakko Kuusisto. This was followed in 2006 by another family opera, One Spooky Night by Jukka Linkola, and the 2008 season saw the premiere of the Festival’s tenth opera, the third and last part of the trilogy based on the books by Mauri Kunnas: The Seven Dog Brothers by Markus Fagerudd. Each year the Festival has, in addition, staged its own productions of leading works from the classical operatic repertoire.

The Savonlinna Opera Festival has also been acting host to foreign opera companies since 1987. The first of these was the Estonia Theatre from nearby Tallinn. This was followed for the next three seasons by the world-famous Mariinsky Theatre from St. Petersburg, by Covent Garden from London in 1998, the Opéra national du Rhin from Strasbourg in 1999, the New Israeli Opera in 2000, Los Angeles Opera in 2001, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 2002, the Teatro Municipal de Santiago from Chile in 2003, the Latvian National Opera in 2004, the Gran Teatre del Liceu from Barcelona in summer 2005, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in 2006 and the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia from Moscow in 2007. The guest for 2008 was the Shanghai Opera House.

The Festival has similarly taken some of its own productions abroad. The highly successful Flying Dutchman visited Spain in 1997, and Rautavaara’s Aleksis Kivi went on tour to France in 1998 and Italy in 1999. La forza del destino was staged at Dalhalla in Sweden in 2000 and at the Caesarean Festival in 2001, Macbeth at Dalhalla in 2001 and in Chile in 2003, Rigoletto at Dalhalla and at Hedeland in Denmark in 2002, Turandot in a concert performance in Singapore and The Flying Dutchman at Hedeland in 2003. In 2004 the visit was to Dalhalla in neighbouring Sweden, with the double billing of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci. In autumn 2006 the Savonlinna Opera Festival took The Horseman to the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

The Savonlinna Opera Festival has become one of the most illustrious fixtures in the Finnish cultural calendar, and an event of the greatest international significance. Aino Ackté was right: first-class opera in a romantic, medieval castle amid lake scenery of ‘supernatural beauty’ is a unique and hence unforgettable experience.