This is my ninth Finnish-language opera. I really want to get to ten, but at present, I don't see any prospects for that. I guess it's just another one of those situations where you gotta have faith. This one could go either way: I really liked Sallinen's Red Line; liked his Palace much less. So this one is the tiebreaker, apparently.
King! Lear! You know it well! There's probably not that much to say about that. Verdi kicked around the idea of doing a Lear opera for a while, but never got anywhere; apparently, he was a bit overawed by the prospect. But maybe he shouldn't have been, because this version works fine. In fairness, I imagine Verdi probably had a more ambitious conception of it, but still. It follows after the play fairly closely, though I did notice a few changes (in spite of not having read or seen it in many years): the character of Kent is absent, and the Fool doesn't disappear; he's present in the final scene. Also, he presents a short prologue at the beginning.
Hey man, it's pretty good! Some powerful music that works well with the text, and they were fortunate enough to get Matti Salminen as the title character, which is absolutely the ideal casting. He totally owns the role, vocally, physically, and actingwise. Sweartagod, even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, his final speech nearly left me in tears. You've also got Jorma Hynninen (who played the leads in The Red Line as well as Rautavaara's Aleksis Kivi) as Gloucester. Those are the only names I was familiar with, but there are a lot of other standouts, including Taina Piira and Kirsi Tiihonen, toe-curlingly vicious as Goneril and Regan; and Jorma Silvasti as a very psychopathic Edmund.
All that and also a really effective minimalistic production, with just a few pieces of furniture or stumps of trees on the stage, and ya got yerself a winner. I hope that more of Sallinen's operas will be recorded in the near future, and not just so I can hit my Finnish quota.
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