Review: Urheiluooppera Paavo Suuri
IN AUGUST, THE STADIUM WILL HOST THE MOST UNIQUE GAMES OF THE SEASON: THE 1940 SUMMER OLYMPICS IN HELSINKI. THEY WILL DECIDE PAAVO NURMI’S TENTH GOLD MEDAL
We all know him. And none of us can tell you what he was like. Everyone can list his brightest achievements at the Olympics: six individual and three team gold medals. And yet we are puzzled by the man behind these victories. What price did this stone-faced Finn pay for his victory? What made him run further than any other Finn?
Ghost Games
A sports opera about Paavo Nurmi will be performed at the Olympic Stadium on two days, 11.-12.8.2000. The location is the only possible and only correct one: the Helsinki Stadium was built in 1938 for the 1940 Summer Games. The Games awarded to Finland were never held due to the outbreak of the World War, but it is precisely these “ghost games” of 1940 that will play a significant role in the upcoming sports opera. The event combines sports, opera and theatre in an exceptionally exciting way.
Paavo Haavikko’s text first goes through the stages of Finland and its biggest sports star Paavo Nurmi during the period of independence. The stubborn young runner refuses to take the military oath – he wants to run. But when his illustrious running career was interrupted at the 1932 Los Angeles Games due to professional charges and a disqualification decision, Haavikko continues the story imaginatively: sports director Kekkonen promises Nurmi that he will get the Olympic Games in Finland in 1940 so that Nurmi will have another chance to win gold in the marathon. And Kekkonen himself will be able to declare the 1940 Games open!
What was Finland and the world like in 1940 and beyond?
How will the races go and what kind of prize is reserved for marathon runners? We will find out next August in Helsinki.
Mammoth event
From the beginning, it was clear that no ordinary performance was going to be made for the stadium. Director Kalle Holmberg and set designer Kati Lukka have sat on the wooden benches of the stadium several times over the past year and combed their hair.
Can the entire stadium be a stage? How can the performers quickly change places when the distance from one scene to another can be as much as a hundred metres? What happens if part of the auditorium is staged as part of the events? When does the sun set on the days of the performances in August, so that the theatre’s light cannons get to play the main role? And how can the lines and music of hundreds of singers, musicians and actors be heard and clarified all the way to the top row of seats? Costume designer Riitta Riihonen is used to working in film and TV, but still dressing half a thousand people is a big job – just think of the number of pairs of shoes.
And will the venerable stadium stand intact when it explodes, burns down – or cars drive, horses gallop and a helicopter lands from the sky?
These are questions that have been answered together with the stadium staff, explosives experts, the Finnish Defence Forces and many others. The final answers may not be found until the entire thousand-strong working group has had the opportunity to try and test the stadium’s capabilities themselves.
The performance will first be rehearsed in the small premises of the Helsinki City Theatre and in the Myyrmäki hall, which is the size of the stadium’s green. At the turn of July and August at the latest, the entire performance will be moved to the stadium.
In Sydney’s Olympic year, the fire was also lit in Helsinki
The sports opera has been planned for a couple of years, but the actual rehearsals began last March. The start of the work was celebrated by lighting a festive Olympic flame in the stadium tower, which will burn there until the last performance in August.
The opera’s sheet music has been studied all the way to Stockholm and Berlin, where the main couple of the opera, Gabriel Suovanen, who plays Nurmi, and Johanna Rusanen, who sings the role of his wife, come from. Seppo Ruohonen plays Kekkonen and Eeva-Liisa Saarinen plays the mysterious Dark Woman. The score is transcribed with sweat in the hat – as the young composer Tuomas Kantelinen spews it out of his computer.
It has been a tough but successful year for Kantelinen: Finns have come to know him above all as a film composer. The road to Rukajärvi brought him his second Jussi Award for film music. Now the young man himself is in a fierce ordeal when his first opera is being written.
In Kantelinen’s music, the melody flows flowing flowing and emotionally. The dramatic scenes are given an equally electrifying and striking musical framework. This opera will leave many tunes in the viewer’s mind on the way home! The music of the opera will be conducted by Markus Lehtinen and performed at the stadium by the Jyväskylä Symphony, the Vantaa Opera and Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Choir and the Guards Band.
The major project of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium has astonished even the foreign media. In the run-up to the Sydney Olympics in September, an international TV channel will broadcast a Paavo Nurmi-themed theme to its hundreds of millions of viewers. In addition to the documentary part, the evening will consist of a recording of the Paavo Nurmi sports opera at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium. On the eve of the Stdney Olympics, Finland and Helsinki will thus be the subject of the same kind of international attention as in 1952, when Paavo Nurmi served as the legendary torchbearer of the Olympics. Paavo Nurmi is running again!
Text: Vesa Tapio Valo