Einojuhani Rautavaara, Rasputin (2003)

Now there was a cat that really was gone, let me tell you.

This one happened unexpectedly: I just did a google search for "Finnish operas" and idly clicked on every result and saw WHOA, there's a video of this one on youtube, with subtitles'n'everything! So I had to see it. I've looked as hard as I'm able, and as far as Scandinavian operas go, there's a fair number in Danish, Swedish and Finnish, very few in Norwegian or Icelandic, and I'm gonna venture probably none in Faroese. Although as I understand it, all of these but Finnish are mutually comprehensible to one degree or another, so maybe that doesn't mean much.

Rasputin seems like an ideal subject for an opera, really. A very larger-than-life character just BEGGING to get some crunchy arias for a bass-baritone to sink his fangs into. I really like Rautavaara's music. Very lush, romantic stuff, occasionally flirting a little with atonality, but mainly quite accessible. The story here...well, there are probably no surprises if you're even vaguely aware of Rasputin's biography: he's the only one, seemingly, who can take care of the young haemophilic tsarevich, so he gets in good with the rulers, but he's also kind of crazy and decadent and the nobles hate him, so they kill him. The difficulty that they had with this is always connected with Rasputin himself being some sort of weird demonic supervillain or something, but I have a feeling it had more to do with the assassins' extreme ineptitude than anything else. He was killed just before the February Revolution changed everything, so his death is depicted as sort of symbolic of that.

The real Rasputin, you know, had a wife and three children, but people don't usually think about that because it kind of contradicts or at least complicates the popular conception of the man. They are not featured in this opera, at any rate. That's okay, but the question is...what is this about, really? And the answer is extremely unclear to me. You would think it would be a character study, but it really doesn't actually get under its title character's skin to any great degree. There's a certain amount of politicking among the court, but it never amounts to much, and there are things that you feel like should mean something--like two of the conspirators, Dmitri Pavlovich and Felix Felixovich being lovers, which I gather is based on contemporaneous rumors--but then never do. In fact, none of the characters come across as vividly or distinctly as you'd like them to. I feel like this is trying to be a very old-school opera with classic operatic values, but it's ultimately a bit of a let-down.

However! What this production does have going for it is Matti Salminen in the title role. Salminen played Fafner in the '89-'90 Met Ring productions, and man, he really kills it. Just an absolutely huge bass voice, and at least as he's made up here, the bearing and sunken eyes that make you think, yep, that's Rasputin all right! I wish the opera gave him the chance to do more, but even as it stands, it may well be worth watching for him alone.

Still, there are other Rautavaara operas available, and the music here is strong enough that I may check them out.