Review: Urheiluooppera Paavo Suuri
PAAVO NURMI AS AN OPERA
Paavo Nurmi will run again when an opera about him is performed at the Olympic Stadium on 11 and 12 August.
In the Paavo Nurmi opera, the Olympic Stadium also plays an important role, as the performance spreads out onto the green, running tracks and the stands. Our sports sanctuary is in the same position as, for example, the Netherlands. Verona’s antique arena, which is world-famous as a venue for operas. The night sky – and modern military technology – also colour the final events of the opera in a wonderful way.
The performance is a unique combination of opera and sporting event. The opera’s three-part title is Paavo the Great. The Great Run. The Great Sleep. The first two acts introduce the private Nurmi, who refuses to take the military oath in the very first scene because he has already taken a more important oath.
Nurmi later meets his future wife, with whom he enters into a short-lived marriage. Private happiness is only a mirage of the moment, as Nurmi is thirsty for victories and world records on international tracks. Especially in the USA, where athletes are made big stars. Nurmi also makes running a financially lucrative profession for herself. He becomes acquainted with the later President of the Republic Urho Kekkonen, who in a way becomes his Mephisto character.
Kekkonen loses the battle with the International Association of Athletics Federations and Nurmi is driven out of the Olympic Stadium in Los Angeles. However, Kekkonen gives Nurmi a new chance, an “impossible task”. He promises a great reward if Nurmi helps the Finns to a triple victory in Berlin in 1936 with his knowledge and skills – as he has since done.
In addition to interviewers and newspapers, the opera has choirs, including the Female Spirit Choir, which welcomes Nurmi at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium in the Great Dream episode at the finish line of the marathon run of the 1940 Olympics.
The opera’s comical performance begins without a progressive intermission as a dream play. In it, the opening ceremony of the 1940 Olympics turns into nightmarish images of the Winter War, World War II and the madness of the modern world. Nurmi runs through the burning world with an Olympic torch in his hand, looking for the director of the Games.
The mysterious Dark Woman wants to hear from Nurmi what she has been aiming for with her run, what is the secret of her step and why she refuses to run the lap of honour. At the end of the opera, Nurmi is left out of his own legend by himself in a large, darkening stadium.
Of course, the writer of the libretto plays a key role in the making of the opera. Fortunately, the author is Paavo Haavikko, a man who does not like to walk the trails trodden by others. In the case of a great man like Paavo Nurmi – frozen on top of the nation’s closet, the role of a free spirit in editing the text plays a central role. Paavo Haavikko spoke rather bitter words in the press about the displacement of national culture when the first performance of the Nurmi opera had to be cancelled due to a concert by Tina Turner in the adjacent stadium. In that sense, we can be happy that the statue of Nurmi was not replaced by a statue of Turner!
Another key person in the production of an opera is, of course, its director. Kalle Holmberg has, without a doubt, taken on the feat of Heracles. At least after this, no one can question a man’s courage, and that is already a lot in a man’s life.
The main focus of the opera will of course be on the main character, the Stockholm baritone Gabtriel Suovanen. This year, he had his second world premiere at The Triumph opera in Brussels. In the autumn of 2000, he sang the part of Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème and in 2001 the part of Billy Budd in Britten’s opera of the same name. Suovanen has played bandy at the national level and has also played football.
Regarding the casting of the other roles, soprano Johanna Rusanen is in the role of Nurmi’s wife and tenor Seppo Ruohonen gets the honour of performing as Kekkonen.