Thu 12. and Sat 14.11. at 19:00, Sun 15.11. at 16:00
Alexander Theatre
Chamber Orchestra Avanti!
Juha Siltanen, script and direction
Jean Sibelius, music
Janne Nisonen, conductor
Monica Groop, vocals
Jouko Laivuori, piano
Leena Nuora, actress
Jaana Pesonen, actress
Mervi Takatalo, actress
Kaisa Salmi, lighting and set design
Tuomas Lampinen, costume design
Juhani Liimatainen, sound design
“Schh!” is a comic and tragic musical and dramatic work about humans and the “God” who creates in the next room – a tenderly ironic portrait of Jean Sibelius in 1927 and a high-water mark of egotism. Against his will and too early, in human terms, Sibelius became a symbol of Finland, but he really is Finnish: an egomaniac who fears nothingness to the point of death, for whom childish self-absorption is as natural as self-loathing, filled for almost a hundred years with both the incessant anticipation of death and rapture, sociability and human fear, always in crisis and always invulnerable, as incoherent as he is heavily present, a sinner forever repenting, always defining himself as “wonderful”.
Was it only fantasy that kept his persona in the joints? Sibba, an icon of Finnish creativity, is a strangely modern figure – a bit like a cyber-man escaping reality, king of the imaginary world, his mind present everywhere but never stuck. And that’s who we should all be now, creative dynamos and exports.
Even on his 150th anniversary, Sibelius is everywhere – to the point of exhaustion – as he was, according to the stories, in his own home: as if he were God, he must be taken into account at all times, things must happen on his terms, even if no one can be quite sure what he wants or whether he is even genuinely there. At the end of the festive season, the Avanti! orchestra does the master a favour, letting him slip away from his own portrait, back into hiding. We won’t bother him on stage.
But how does it feel to live in a house where something mysterious and unprecedented happens in one room, silently, for decades? At the edge of the spheres of music and silence, life, in all its “banality”, tries to go on. In place of the protagonist, three women move about without a murmur, setting the table, scaring the fly from buzzing and waiting for something, a bit like Samuel Beckett’s famous vagabonds in Godot. They are accompanied, as discreetly as possible, by the many ensembles of the Avanti! orchestra, playing the expected and the unexpected.
Composer Magnus Lindberg, by the way, once said it was embarrassing that dramas about composers never show what the composer does most of the time, composing, and added: “understandably so, because composing doesn’t look like anything.” The composer’s portrait this time is also a comment on this: it is a stage poem about absence, about what a “creative person” looks like “from the outside”. Let everyone learn a lesson.
“Now get it through your head that you – Ego – are a genius!” (Jean Sibelius in his youthful diary)
Duration of the performance approx. 2h, including intermission.
Tickets: €30 / €20, www.lippupalvelu.fi
MUSIC CHART – Compositions by Jean Sibelius
I SHOW
Capriccietto
Adagio d
“Ljunga Virginia”, part 2
“Ett ensamt skidspår”
Stage music “Ödlan”, scene 2
“La pompeuse marche d’Asis”
II THURSDAY
Drama music “Death”, part 1, Tempo di valse lente
Adagio “To my beloved Aino”
Drama music “Pelléas and Mélisande”, part 6, “De trenne blinda systrar”
Stage music “Storm”, part 23, “Rainbow” (soundtrack)
Stage music “Death”, part 5, Moderato
Capriccietto (Magnus Lindberg’s arrangement for small orchestra)
“sound forest” (sound track)
Andantino D “Till Emma-Kristina Marie-Louise Berndtson – Lulu”
